For the first time in a long time
I'm feeling good. Clarity. Comfort. Routine. More importantly, I can see the future again. The RAM and scratch disks aren't so full. I'm working in megabytes again, not kilobytes.
There's a lot to be said for happiness and contentedness. The latter leads to the former.
Incidentally, I have synaesthesia. One of the 4%. I heard about it years ago on a TV show called QI and for the first time could put a name to it. Today I read about it again, on the ABC. I've had it my whole life. I always thought it was normal. But nope. 96% of the population are evidently freaks...
By the way, Wednesday is green...
Cricket
Watching my youngest two play cricket, just now, brought back a memory from when I was (probably) the age of my eldest.
My dad, playing cricket on South Molle Island. Smackin' it. The hero. The champion of his team.
All those years ago.
McRussianWarship, GoFuckYourself
Russia - the Mafia State.
Putin - actual real-world living breathing Fascist.
ANTIFA - left-wing show-pony pussies, where are you now?
NATO - bombed the Serbs for less than this.
EU - useless, gutless, pointless, forever.
Men, woman, babies, children - civilians in the street, civilians in hospital, civilians at home - all targets for Russian murderers.
Death to Russia.
Death to Russians.
Death to Putin.
No Big Macs for you.
Putin is Hitler
Evil Empire 2.0.
"Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said Russia has put a gun to the head of Ukraine's government, following a question from former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn about whether he would accept a reduction in NATO troops on the border if Russia pulled back.
Mr Corbyn, independent MP for Islington North, asked in the Commons: "Would he be prepared to countenance, if the Russians pulled back, any reduction in the NATO presence on the border as well in order to bring about a longer-term secure peace in the region?"
Mr Wallace said: "We didn't put 165,000 combat troops on the edge of a sovereign country and hold a gun to the head of a democratically elected government. We didn't do that. Russia did that. We have nothing to deescalate from, Russia does."
He added that he hoped Mr Corbyn "might condemn the Stop The War Coalition, who seem to always us paint us as the aggressor. Maybe he'd like to go and ask the people of Ukraine... who the aggressor is."
Take that, Jeremy Corbyn, you fucking Communist cunt.
Source: Telegraph.
Sometime, September 2006
"... it has hit Evan hard and I hoped that it wouldn't affect him so badly. I am pretty well and Evan should not dwell on it. Actually I feel better than I have for years. At first I thought of not telling him because I DO NOT want him to come back to Australia for any other reason but for his own life and career. He has a great opportunity in the UK and I want him to make the most of it ..."
I'm not a witch
19 January, 2022
To Whom It May Concern, Zoe Covid Study
My wife and children all succumbed to Omicron, having tested positive via PCR and lateral flow tests. This was last week.
I remain unaffected and my lateral flow tests all return negative results. We all live together in the same flat, so I've been as exposed as everyone else.
My wife says I'm a witch, but I know I have superior genes. In 2010 before we were married, she also contracted swine flu, and I didn't get that either, despite spending all our time together.
Are you aware of a research place that might benefit from testing my evidently superior blood? I'm not a witch.
Thanks,
Evan Skuthorpe
I'm taking my ball and going home!
"I know you are but what am I", said every person ever whom had no basis to their argument yet felt the need to carry on fighting. It's a phrase that also summarises the non-reason, ill-logic, and most humorously of all, the level of sophistication behind the Federal Governments 'reason' for detaining Djokovic - his apparent lack of 'double vaccination'.
On Djokovic contracting Covid-19, Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce said it was "not enough, you have to be double-vaccinated ". Yet this is non-science. A policy for policies sake. Where the arbitrary meets the autocratic, peddled by the idiot, supported by the unthinking, backed up by the muscle of the Fascist state.
This shouldn't need explaining, but... inoculation allows the body to learn to fight off a virus, and so results in antibodies (and T-cells) being equipped to fight that specific virus in future. Djokovic's naturally acquired antibodies (through recent Covid-19 infection) negate the need for vaccination. Vaccination, double dose or otherwise, is therefore meaningless and arbitrary. But Barnaby says otherwise because Barnaby is a fact-denying, scientifically illiterate, policy for policy sake, arbitrary moron.
According to the ABC, the Deputy PM rejects suggestions that Australia's reputation has been damaged, saying "We'll do what's right and we will do what follows the process, that's equivalent for all people, we are not making special exemptions for people because they're rich and famous, that's not how Australia works and it's certainly not the mail we are getting, Australians want everybody treated fairly but equally." Fairly but equally he says... Let's examine that in a moment. But first, elsewhere, to assure the seemingly outraged locals yokals, PM Scott Morrison reaffirmed that of Djokovic's apparent grant of an exemption (before it was revoked on arrival), it was the same rule for millionaires as it is for everyday Australians. Let's also examine that...
So... in the context of Australia's arbitrary Covid-19 travel and entry restrictions, the PM and Deputy PM both stated that all Australians are treated with fairness and equality, regardless of wealth or fame... Unless of course... you happened to be rich and famous millionaires Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban and their two daughters, Alan Sugar, Zac Efron, Dannii Minogue and her son, Kerry Stokes and his wife, Melissa McCarthy and the rest of the cast and crew of Nine Perfect Strangers, and so on. These people were given preferential treatment to enter and leave Australia at will, and were granted exemption from mandatory hotel prison quarantine while they were at it, either entirely, or at least being able to do it in private residences. Meanwhile, non-millionaire non-famous ordinary Australian citizens and their dependent families (whom happened to be overseas) were unlawfully denied their inherent right to return to their homeland - because not millionaires and not famous.
But apart from that, it was the same rule...
Except it's not. Not even Australia now knows what hypocrisies it sticks to, denies, or accepts... In 2020 and 2021, these rich and famous millionaires were let in, despite not being vaccinated, while Australian citizens, even if vaccinated, were not. Fast forward to now (January, 2022) and Djokovic, another rich and famous millionaire, who is for all-intents-and-purposes, 'vaccinated' (he has antibodies), is not allowed in. Australia has evidently decided on a policy that says 'no-jab no-entry' but non-jabbed people did come and did enter, while those who have antibodies (the same as being jabbed) cannot come and cannot enter. It is illogical and defies reason. That is unless of course you're the PM or Deputy PM - then it makes absolute sense.
I've said it before and I'll never tire of saying it again, especially when the ammunition is so readily and generously provided - Australia is a backwater and an international pariah. A bad joke without a punchline. A bush road that goes in circles. An echo chamber full idiots.
1 million years behind the rest of the world, Australia finally admitted defeat in its foolish and unwinnable policy of so-called 'zero covid'. Yet it still pursues utterly childish policies devoid of purpose and defunct of need - culminating most recently, ironically, in foreigner Djokovic being treated like the tens of thousands of 'unlawful' overseas Australians before him. Except this time, thanks to him being a foreigner, Australia's jobsworth national character and the ingrained ineptitude of the isolationist reactionary, the shit storm has caught the eye of international media - and the coverage is less than favourable.
After a humiliating loss in court today, PM Morrison and Deputy PM Joyce took their ball and went home.
Reference: ABC
1 second a day 2021
The spectre at the feast casts his unwelcome shadow. His cursed presence looms, with that all too familiar sense of dread and impending doom enveloping us like a London pollution-haze on a summer day - sticky with grime and filth clinging to sweat, unable to rid ourselves of it. Or like a thick early morning fog, unable to make-out anything other than shape in the middle distance and nothing further beyond. This, our second year of existential crisis and uncertainty. There is a lot to be said for familiarity and routine...
The Commonwealth Backwater of Australia and its unthinking bumpkin inhabitants proved themselves deeply lacking these last two years. At first unlawfully denying citizens their inherent right to return to their homeland, enforced hotel prison stays, confirmation of an extreme and reactionary national character lacking in compassion, piss poor governance, back of the queue for vaccines, arbitrary internal borders, and so on... An international pariah on par with Russia or China.
How can one possibly articulate the depth of feeling around the injustice of Australia's betrayal? I unfortunately don't yet possess that power. I can only say Australia denied itself the privilege of our presence and so, fuck them, we said. Let that bridge and all the other side of it burn.
Outside of London (the rest of the UK), everything is either a Third World shit hole or is run down, depressed, poor, neglected. Inside of London, everything but Zone 1 is full of the Third World. The entire union is an utterly miserable, top-heavy, comically grim, crime-ridden shithole weighed down by the weight of its own history. And with an oppressive and sizeable left wing bent forever regressive and destructive, coupled with a government of nepotism and cronyism... It will forever be damned to remain a low-rent, low-sky, mud covered, dark little shoebox of a country. The thought of remaining here is overwhelming at times, yet when the alternative is Australia - a landscape of small industry, small minds, few jobs, few thinkers, low salaries, low collective-intelligence, and unthinking uncritical moronic reactionary jobs-worths, the realisation that we're doomed whatever, sends one in circles.
The only saving grace to this country is 'our London' - the historical and cultural centre of the world. Leaving 'our London' was our greatest and most foolish mistake. From centre-of-the-world Zone 1 to fuck-knows-where Bumbkinville. Purgatory is our new reality. And our punishment.
Where to from here? As close to London as is affordable. In the meantime, treading water, and trying not to sink.
1 second a day 2021 will likely be my last. This audience of one grows tired of the effort.
The brevity of life
That all too familiar feeling of existential crisis has returned. It's been brought on by thoughts of 'home', distant family (in more ways than one), the gravity of remaining in the UK forever, our prevailing instability in life, our lack of certainty, and an inability to see the forest for the trees (hopefully that's all it is).
All brought on, on this day of getting older, and by the brevity of life.
Ponder
Sat in the Coeur De Lion with the eldest boy. The day before the big one. Nearly 14,610 days old. Christ... I ponder life while he plays happily on the iPad.
Meanwhile, patrons discuss and dismiss threats of a lingering lockdown. There is no evidence for one is the apparent consensus. The facts, and I agree - hospitalisations and deaths remain steady, yet Europe, the Welsh and the Scots, and other backward places panic. Typical. There is one nutter who supports lockdowns, blindly. He strikes me as the 'highly offended' type... The national mood, thankfully, disagrees with him. Hopefully the government reads this mood correctly.
Christmas is finished and the new year fast approaches. Those once far-off things mean life decisions, put off to buy ourselves relief and refrain from our two years of turmoil and strain, must now be taken off ice and decided upon. Where to? Bath is not for us - it was only temporary anyway. Australia is a joke. London is where the heart and mind calls - but it's not feasible for us. We have places nearby in mind, we've investigated and visited them too.
There is a formula that informs where one can live here in the UK and it comes once again to the fore - affordability, safety, commutability. For mere mortals, only two criteria can be met at any one time, while a third must be sacrificed. There is always hope of a lotto win however (looking up at you, dad) and then central London living is back on the cards, as before...
I'll be 40 tomorrow - what to show for it?
We're in London Thursday to celebrate my birthday, belatedly. Back to civilisation. Back to my spiritual home.
Bumpkins, everywhere
I met a braindead anti-vaccination person today. A cab driver in bumpkin Bath. For context, Bath is a city with a 'fear' of 5G. A place where they still point at airplanes and where they stop and stare at passing ambulances...
This man blamed the 'spread' of Covid-19 (in the UK) on "maskless vaccinated people going about, mingling in groups, indoors", as if normal life was somehow wrong, and an outrage, and that vaccinated people were the odd-balls, and that we should all never do these things ever again...
He is correct in his understanding of the 'spread' though (and I can't fault his reasoning) - just like the common cold. Or influenza. Or any other virus...
There is of course however a disconnect with this view and with reality. In the UK, once again, we're likely to be heading into a lockdown of sorts. But the cab driver's insinuation was clear, and baseless.
I noted he made no mention of the fact that Covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths (in the UK) are 90% his fellow unvaccinated halfwits, and that this is the only reason 'spreading' is an 'issue' (as the reason the health system is at risk of being overwhelmed).
I also noted he possessed no concept that Covid-19 is now endemic and to be lived with and mitigated. Just like the common cold. Or influenza. Or any other virus.
I had him drive me to the vaccination centre for my Covid-19 booster jab... Bumpkin Leftard.
8th December
Today marks one year since the world's first inoculation against COVID-19 took place, here in the UK. It was administered to Margaret Keenan, 90. One year later, more than 81% of the UK population over the age of 12 have received their full course of two vaccine doses. Nearly 21 million more have received a third 'booster' dose with the total amount of doses now given currently standing at over 119,000,000. Well done, human endeavour. Well done, UK.
Yep.
In mid 2020, Australia unlawfully denied its citizens their inherent right to return to their own country. It pulled up the drawbridge, put up the middle finger, and mouthed a big “fuck you!” to every Australian citizen living overseas.
Like all good international pariahs, Australia proved itself an authoritarian, third-world, tin-pot banana republic. Only, unique to Australia - this authoritarian, third-world, tin-pot banana republic was run once again by the Rum Corps. If there was any doubt, Australia confidently revealed itself to those of us smart enough to live elsewhere, that it was truly a backwater of the highest order. As Churchill observed, Australians were 'bad stock'. Hilariously reactionary, half-witted, line-towing, bootlicking, knuckle-dragging. Bumpkins who lack any ability to think critically, instead conditioned and prone to sloganistic governance, like children. Or simpletons. Or the Chinese. Or all three. But of course, for those of us smart enough to live elsewhere, there wasn't any doubt.
The federal government issued threats of gaol, heavy financial penalties, and a criminal record for any absolute fucking scum citizen who dared try to enter.
This was the government of a so-called democratic nation actively using the levers of power to erect legal barriers that were purposefully designed to prevent its own citizens from entering their own country. I repeat, the government of the Commonwealth of Australia made it illegal for Australians to step foot in their own country.
There was no outrage, no protest, no parliamentary challenges in either house. None. Because this was all perfectly reasonable, apparently. This of course was complicitly nodded through, unchallenged, by an unquestioning and obedient populace. A populace of fellow Australian citizens, only this lot - insular, selfish, unworldy dumb shits (members of my own family included). Of course, to imply that this was 'nodded through' lends the impression that Australians are an intelligent and politically engaged lot who both understand and value that rights and freedoms are precious and sacrosanct. Australians aren't those things. The Australian national character is one of docility, compliance, and reactionist fear above all else. The Australian people either didn't notice the injustice or simply agreed with it.
As long as that lot were 'safe', safe from the 'dragons be here' lurking in the waters just outside the national borders - then everyone else, fellow citizens included, could go and get fucked. After all, "they had their chance to return home", and "why would they be overseas anyway?" went much of the (simplistic) commentary and narrative... And the government drove that narrative, perpetuating that "dragons be here" - pointing at the rest of the world on a map.
That 'safe' segment of populace now dictated that the 'un-safe' foreign lot could no longer enter their own house. First and second class citizenship had arrived - complete with nasty accusatory finger.
This diktat remains in place to this day where the country remains off limits and illegal for Australian citizens to return to (with the exception of New South Wales as of November 2021).
Yep.
Remember Remember the 5th of November
These late trains are a real pain in the arse. I don't know what GWR are up to lately, but they could do with an involuntary rear ending.
I'm sat in the Star and Garter; the Italian barman shakes my hand. I chat with an east ender from the island of dogs. We chat about history, London, change, the east London line, and photography. He's a fire marshal. In comes an American, from Chicago. We chat about the weather, the change of seasons, and where is colder - London or Chicago. He sold his business and is here on leisure.
Street photography later, I sit in the French House, a cliquey pub for the creatives and the famous. Like a fly on the wall. I chat with a Fitzrovia local whose friend is releasing an audio project on Soho. In comes a retired creative, his photographers shot the wedding of Charles and Diana. He has an American friend with him. We chat this and that, mostly photography, 35mm, medium and large formats, Jason Lee, and Soho, before all part ways.
The theatre actors rush off, ready for their respective shows. It quietens. I sit. Too cold and dark to shoot anything. I nod at those who mistake me for another - I look like someone else in these parts, always have. I'm the most famous non-famous in Soho.
On a related note, my project received a special mention at client HQ earlier today. The highest of echelons. My own creative authority and fame shines. Well done me. Well done OldWorld Creative.
Dear Jebus?
I miss my dad. I wish he was here to help solve my problems. I've prayed and spoken internally and audibly asking for help. But alas, nothing. No after-life exists. He doesn't hear because he's dead. Gone. Forever.
Life is shit. Life is hard.
All this used to be pubs
I've cut through past what was the Pillars of Hercules. God knows what it is now. I cross over to Denmark Street. Half the guitar shops have gone on the northern side. What a shame.
Google have their headquarters near here, just over there in fact (pointing across the street) opposite The Angel. Or maybe they've moved to Kings Cross by now, I don't know. I interviewed with them once, mid-lockdown, during IR35 turmoil, but the interviewer, a man who would have been my boss, appeared less than an ideal boss. I turned it down with their recruiter on a call afterwards. Incidentally I didn't get the role for lack of formal managerial experience. But I turned it down anyway. That's all that counts.
The Bloomsbury Tavern beckons. It's just opened for the day. As I approach the sign board has just gone up. The Old Crown just down the road has been done up since I last saw it, but this is a Bloomsbury Tavern kind of day.
I'm back off to Soho shortly - street photography, you see. What else?
Nearly 14,610 days
The train in is quicker than usual, stopping only once before reaching its destination. A rare win.
Today incidentally marks 19 years since leaving the old place. Tomorrow marks 19 years in the new. My old man accompanied me on that first flight. It was on the old 747 and entire rows were empty, probably 90-95% so. I've only had that once or twice in my subsequent travels. My dad took a row of four and laid down to sleep. I remained in our row of three and did the same.
The war museum entices me - I note the factual errors. Nothing new for a head-up-their-own-arse British-centric world view, but it still bothers me. Ingrates. Temptation to collar a member of staff urges high, but life's wisdom gained reminds me nothing is achieved that way, as unjust as that is and as momentarily satisfying as it would be. The older I get the more I realise the world doesn't change just because I know it's wrong. I resign myself to that fact. Let them be wrong, at least I and intelligent others, a minority, know better. I'm surprised it bothered me so today, how bad all that it is here. I must have just become blasé to it all over the years it seems, and today, I am sensitive to it again given recent events.
I find a pub, a new one. It must be pub 1016. I spy another across the road. Distressed, I look at the map - these and another two appear in close proximity. How on earth did I miss these? Is it me? No. It must be Lambeth that is wrong... It does pose the question - four pints now, or two, and save the other two for next time? But I'm hungry. Four pints on an empty stomach, or two...? I can't leave this at just one pub, it's against convention... and... the law... But I'm off to Soho for street photography, the whole point of today, and that means at least the Star and Garter and Norman's Coach and Horses... Two more pints on top... Oh fuck.
Friends visit tomorrow. I look forward to it, as do the boys.
My birthday soon approaches... soon to be 14,610 days old.
It's done!
"Fuck that place", we said. No country on earth would treat its citizens like that. Well, apart from China, but they're a Commie shit hole, so you'd expect it from there.
A clearly unlawful deprivation of the rights of free men, justly being challenged at the UN, the wilful disregard for what is an inherent and inalienable right of the private citizen to freely enter their own home, their own place of birth or legal naturalisation, their own country - has been denied.
Just as the metaphorical blizzard approached the door, slam! "Fuck them! We're safe, and that's all that matters..." said every Australian politician, complicitly nodded through by every Australian citizen within. By using the levers of state, these unanswerable bureaucrats and faceless others put holt to flights, to border control, to migration, to people's lives. Australians pulled up the draw bridge and hung a sign that read 'Go Fuck Yourself!'.
This huge 'fuck you' was a 'fuck you' to any citizen whom for whatever reason, did not happen to be the 'right' kind of citizen - the ones 'within' the country. The Australian national character is a reactionary, selfish and nasty one. 'Within', they like to think they're a laid-back sort of people, a people who look out for each other. History proves anything but. No other country on earth prevented its citizens from entering their own country. Australia did. It also gleefully abandoned citizens to their fate, just like those abandoned in Afghanistan as the Talibs seized control. "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people" said Donald Horne, and their reactionary actions prove this true. Australians are a people so dumbfounded by the world around them, anything different or foreign is to be feared. Especially so during war, famine, or pandemic.
Critical thought, freedom of expression, arts, culture, independent travel, exposure to opposing ideas, being aware of the world around us, and knowing our time and place in history - these are the things that forge an intelligent being and frame a future for young ones. Reactionary isolationism does not.
Today, we processed our one-way flights for a refund. Australia, by contrast, decades behind, still comically bickers like children - about vaccines, case numbers, quarantine, flight caps, lockdowns, masks, home quarantine, whatever. Yet citizens remain stranded, unlawfully so, still.
But for us, it's done. "Fuck that place", we said.
Apoplectic with nuclear rage
Define French - emotional, irrational, shrill.
Define Chinese - vitriolic, nasty, insecure, child-like.
Who knew?
10,000 hours and all that
Like a Stephen Shore, but poorly executed, and a Joel Meyerowitz, only with no skill or talent.
Fuck you, photography!
1) (return to) Shoot(ing) film
2) Develop film
3) Scan film
4) Review
5) Muse
6) Frustration
7) Contemplate own future / self-worth
8) Share on Instagram anyway
9) Get nothing
1) (go back to) Shoot(ing) digital
2) Develop film
3) Scan film
4) Review
5) Muse
6) Frustration
7) Contemplate own future / self-worth
8) Share on Instagram anyway
9) Get nothing
Repeat.
Dear sir
Jordan Hayne, ABC,
2nd July, 2021.
As an Australian who was 'stranded overseas' and has since taken the decision not to return, at all, ever, due to Australia's/Australian's 'fortress Australia' mentality, and their vile treatment and disregard for fellow citizens overseas, and apparent zero-worth of citizenship and lack of protection it affords, I read with great glee how backward and behind-the-times Australia is in its 2-year-late epiphany of 'living with covid'.
Oh how I laugh at the constant childish state-federal bickering and never-ending lockdown comedy, and reactionary hysteria that is the national character.
Meanwhile, with my double vaccination and freedoms and all, I was disappointed to see the non-word of 'normalcy' being used by yourself. The word, I think you'll find, is 'normality'. Read a book!
Yours,
Evan Skuthorpe
Happiness is 'U' shaped
Life continually gets shit until you reach 47.2 years of age, apparently*. That's 47 years and 73 days in normal speak. 47 years and 73 days of continual shitty decline, reducing happiness, and ever-fewer moments of joy.
Then, 'life' is said to get better. That is of course until you die, and is presumably on the assumption you don't get terminally sick or physically crippled from day 74 of year 47 onwards. But before you die, as you gradually approach 47 years and 73 days, you'll certainly have more aches and pains set in. Bits stop working as they used to. New shit starts happening that didn't happen before.
Further, TV gets worse, music stopped being good a long time ago, for some reason there are more genders than science can count, collective stupidity of the Western world increases - perpetually so, and worse still - feelz defeating realz - where society becomes more polarised and fractured and everything that ever happened is now highly 'offensive' and should be illegal.
But 'life' gets better, apparently. Except for all the above.
Reference: Science Focus
Yep
"Extinction Rebellion's last London demo left 120 tons of rubbish on the street." ~ MP Nickie Aiken, 2021.
Hold my beer...
"The road ahead for Afghanistan is still long and difficult. Yet, the Afghan people can know that their country will never be abandoned to terrorists and killers." ~ President Bush, 2004.
"Hold my beer." ~ President Biden, 2021.
Just the worst...
People who like U2. And Cold Play. Oh, and President Joe Biden.
Remember when, in a private conversation with a friend, in what was quite clearly the language of bravado and bluster, President Trump said something about 'grabbing women by the pussy'? Or, should it need explaining for the reactionary extremists – the big bad man spoke of power and money and fame being catalysts for rich and powerful men to get what they want, in his case, from obliging fame-and-power-hungry women. Yeh. Remember how the reactionaries, the woke, and the press all went apoplectic with rage?
Yeh, hashtag me too.
Well ... President Biden just abandoned Afghanistan to brutal autocratic Islamic terrorists...
Remember how the reactionaries, the woke, and the press all went apoplectic with rage? Nah, neither do I. Not a single peep.
A democracy surrounded by enemies - abandoned. And all without foresight of the terrorist atrocities yet to be landed on the West, soon to be born and originated in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. As retired US Army Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmitt said, "Taliban 2.0 are like Taliban 1.0. — but with a better public relations campaign."
But hey, at least Biden didn't have a private conversation about power and money and fame and women's pussies. He did however demonstrate that democracies don't defend democracy when it gets too hard. He also confirmed that democracy, and by association the West, is now dead.
Remember? Yeh, hashtag me too...
The world is yours now, China and Russia - take it.
Goodnight Saigon Kabul.
Happy birthday, Old Man
Dad would have been 72 years old today.
In our very brief time together as an adult (me an adult, not him), I remember going to the pub with him just thrice. The first was the Courtfield when I was 20, the second and third, maybe two or three years later, were The Red Lion, and The Red Lion and Pineapple.
I wonder what he'd make of the world now, and what he'd make of me.
On an unrelated note, The Red Lion and Pineapple had a cast-iron (presumably) statue of a red lion on the roof. I'd always intended to steal that one day, but I guess, never got around to it.
Happy birthday, Old Man. I miss you.
Liberty or Death
The police state of Australia - police state since inception through current day, erode further the inalienable rights of free men on this day, the 6th of August, 2021.
By cowardly decree, sneaked in silently and without consent nor authority, citizens, dual-nationals, permanent residents - all who suffer attacks on their liberty by so-called their government, those specifically who reside in other nations either through work permits, citizenship, or other, are now to be further deprived of freedom, held illegally against their will, and denied their rights to freedom of movement should they need, or want, to temporarily visit Australia. Previously those outside could not enter, while those within could not leave. Today, one and all cannot enter nor leave.
Liberty is dead, long live Liberty? Fuck off it will...
"Once an honest man could go from sunrise to its set without encountering agents of his state or government. But a sorry cloud of tyranny has fallen across the land, brought on by hollow men, who did not understand ... that for centuries our forefathers have fought and often died, to keep themselves unto themselves - to fight the rising tide, and that if in the smallest battles we surrender to the state, we enter in a darkness whence we never shall escape. So if ever a man should ask you for your business or your name, tell him to go and fuck himself, tell his friends to do the same. Because a man who'd trade his liberty for a safe and dreamless sleep doesn't deserve the both of them, and neither shall he keep." ~ Sons of Liberty, Frank Turner, 2009.
"It's all part of a masterplan"
"Say it loud and sing it proud, today... "
I'm shooting on the F6 today. Half a roll in and I retreat to the pub. It's all I've been able to muster. I brought the Q2 too but digital can fuck off, again. Full circle? No. Just a phase. Just me.
The roll has sat in the F6 since God knows when. I've no idea what sits captured on the first 18 or so frames.
I sit in the Star and Garter on this fine rainy Soho day, watching the rain come down. It's soothing. Thought's swirl - the many plans and what-ifs I've had over the years. I recently learned that old boy, who'd run the pub for decades, sold up last year during lockdown. He sold it to a man who then killed himself. The new landlord I don't know, only this new barmaid.
Over there, two baldies sit. They look like father and son. How nice that must be. Discussing this or that, two pints in between, and close. Father and adult son. Alas.
Others arrive, wet from the rain, peering meerkat-like left and right, looking for a place to rest and to shelter. They squeeze into the corner, moving heavy iron tables like bus drivers turn their steering wheels. They slide the stools too, making room. To squeeze in.
The social etiquette of the London pub plays out, Londoners - workers and locals alike, observe with an unstated joy, knowingly half-smiling (at least I do) at this familiar routine. It's how the pub used to be, pre-covid, I mean. Village life has returned it seems.
"I'm older than I wish to be, this town holds no more for me."
My 40th is fast approaching. These what-ifs and plans remain if only as fantasies. My photographic legacy remains in the future. It's shit, but so am I. And a First in my degree, with Honours no less. Oh well... Talent, connections - knowing the right people - these things are not mine.
"Some might say, that we should never ponder... on our thoughts today, cos they hold sway over time..."
A hundred or so rolls lay undeveloped, all 135 and 120. Surely hundreds more sit sleeved yet remain unscanned.
"Some might say, we will find a brighter day."
I will soon commence again, digitising these untold treasures on film that I've produced over the years. Aldgate, Soho, the City, mostly. Negatives and some positives - digitised for my own interest if nothing else and published on Instagram - Words & Photography, as well as on my own account.
"All my life, I've tried to find another way..."
Oasis is finishing up on my earphones and my second pint is done. Off to Paddington ... via The King and Queen ... for just ... one ... more.
The curse of our time
"Oh, I just crop on my computer " ~ every photographer 2021.
Nope.
From the Before Times
In my favourite pub of all time. Norman's Coach and Horses. It threatens rain outside, I rest from a morning of street photography and a failed memory card.
A regular I know by eye and by ear from the before times sits diagonally opposite, with his dog. He's an oddball by contemporary societal norms. We briefly chat about this or that - mostly leaked news of covid 'passports' for pubs and other things. "It's in the Times", he exclaims, so it must be correct, goes the supposition. He's intelligent, well spoken. Like a Jacob Rees-Mogg, only from Soho. I like him. The barman chimes in from across the way. Out-of-town northerners listen in from a table over. Everyone voices an opinion. 'He' northerner looks put out. 'She' northerner looks amused.
The piano has been moved. I don't like it. Alas.
It's like I never left. Bliss.
With such glee and vindication...
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise." ~ Donald Horne, The Lucky Country.
For the sake of posterity
With the explosion of amateur photography at the very dawn of this millennium, thanks to the emergence of affordable mass-market digital compact cameras, followed closely by the birth of social media, and the almost-overnight sensation of smartphone technology a couple of years after that, our contemporary photographic age is now largely a cacophony of visual noise - often overwhelming and underwhelming all at once. And all for the wrong reasons.
Suddenly, photography was cheap, figuratively and literally, becoming nothing but a flash-saturated record of shit drunken nights out, blurred poorly framed generic holiday 'snaps' of some crap statue somewhere shit - these scenes inadvertently also capturing other stupid tourists taking pictures of other crap - at first with cheap digital cameras with resolving power less than that of a budget roll of film put through some crappy Russian camera - and in contemporary times, with their telephone cameras. Meh.
Ultimately, nothing was being said and no stories of value were being told. But at least it was cheap, and thanks to social media, everywhere...
Once-upon-a-time photography was a novelty, and photographers were too. Straight photographs from the 19th century would typically reveal a then-contemporary locale - a business frontage, a store, resplendent with a plethora of typography-based signage advertising the proprietor's various wares, a kind of shop signage long-since gone. Here, the townsfolk gather in front to pose and posture in the knowledge that they'd be captured on glass plate for posterity. It was a novelty for both the subject and the viewer of the photograph. By contrast, these days we're more likely to see a 'picture' of some dick's dick or some other dick's plate of shit food. Or some dick posing in front of his plate of shit food in some wanky restaurant catering directly to those kinds of dicks.
Anyway, this work is shot in analogue, in part for its archival qualities, but most pointedly because I prefer the medium to the clinical, intangible and soulless nothing of digital photography. Aptly titled 'For the sake of posterity', the body of work is an informal and long-term project that seeks to record our (my) contemporary time and age, but also the ongoing layered history of London's urban environment, and life within it.
With a nod to the future and wink towards said posterity, this is a personal work to satisfy my desire to record a lived experience. As I build upon this project - through exposing the rolls of film, in the beginning traipsing back-and-forth to the lab and later developing the film myself, not to mention finding the time and motivation required to sit and scan negatives, to selectively edit which frames to scan, and the later post-production of chosen images ... then there's the financial costs of everything. All in all, I slowly build a body of work that will one day take photobook form. Or ... if I'm dead before then, it'll sit in a box until someone with a similar drive has the gumption and time to do something with it all.
The past is the future and I've always been an historian at heart and photographs that incidentally document a time, whether conceptually or otherwise, have always held fascination for me, and so, I too document the urban environment out of a passion for what is and what will, given enough time passed, have been. Contemporary photos will be old too, one day, stupid kids ...
The work is being shot on 35mm and medium format film.
