Walking Commentary
Manchester to Rome 2021
I think you should enjoy seeing Robert Fisk at work in ‘This Is Not A Movie’. I don’t know where you might see it but like today’s newspapers, it’ll probably be on a digital screen. We watched it on Amazon Prime so I know that’s one source.
This is a panoramic shot of Kew Gardens taken while I was standing outside the Palm House which had just closed before we got there. Our own fault, we had arrived at Kew Gardens too late but a kind ticket collector took pity on us and let us in. As she advised, everything was closed. And all the people we encountered were walking towards the exit.
[Read more…] about This Day Last YearOur media are showing restaurants and bars, cinemas and sports. There is an emphasis on we are missing. On the face of it, the global media appear to be pandering to and reinforcing our anxieties.
People say that Wordsworth wrote in praise of the early morning in London, saying that ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’. That was in 1802, half a century before before the The Great Stink changed the way London used the River Thames for waste management.
My first job found me working in Sharjah in the UAE. Thwarted for years, I carelessly used most of my fourth monthly paycheck to buy the state of the art Canon A-1 in 1979, taking advantage of the freedom from purchase taxes in neighbouring Dubai. Friends and colleagues were buying the more affordable AE-1 but I thought I’d likely hold onto the camera for a decade so I went for the A-1; future proofing was the justification for acquiring this object of professional desire, with its better viewfinder, faster shutter speeds and exposure compensation. It was worth it because the A-1 made me out to be a better photographer than I had been. And it helped that there was often more sunlight in the desert than in Ireland.
Isn’t it ironic that my brain started making it’s own free associations at a time that social free association is proscribed?
It started again when there came a pier walk first thing this morning. And with that came a waft of stale urine from long closed public conveniences.
