It looks like I may have laid these captions over the photo with some editing software but that’s not the case. Instead these were hanging above Briggate, in Leeds, because someone had clearly decided that positive-sounding, but actually meaningless, exhortations to solidarity are just what the country needs to get us through this time of incompetency.
When I was younger, propaganda convinced me that everywhere behind the old Iron Curtain was grey, drab and polluted. This is of course not the case, was never the case. Eastern European cities (see also Prague, Tallinn, more) seem to have this effortless sophistication, a handsome civility that should shame all who voted for the idiocy that is Brexit. Britons have much to learn from such places, the trouble is that 17 million of them said, we don’t want to. (The Croatians have also learned from us though — at least, they have acquired an understanding of ‘the pub’.)
Usually by this date in the year I am somewhere else. 2015, for example — halfway up Kilimanjaro. Last year — Whitehaven. (OK, not so exotic, but still, on holiday.) There are other examples. This year, I’m still working, at least for another few days. But walking through Chinatown on my way to work each day at least allows for some globetrotting by proxy.
After 1,040 days I need now and again to try to see something more than the usual scenes. Heavy cropping made something of what was otherwise a standard ‘train coming in’ snapshot. Does the modern display board spoil the shot?
Being 42 