Although these flowers looked good I wasn’t expecting them to make a pleasing photo. The composition was too messy. But by chance the final balance of light and shade has worked out well and I’m happy with the result. This image makes me imagine myself an insect – a bee or a hoverfly, let’s say. I picture myself lost in this world of leaves and petals. A green thought in a green shade, and a pink thought in a pink one. As children we can lose ourselves in these vegetative universes, given the opportunity – but I guess that means growing up in a temperate climate with nature at hand. We used to make tunnels through the grass in the field near our house. Looking back, I don’t see how they could have been tunnels as such, but they felt like tunnels to us. We could make adventures out of the most unpromising props. My brother and I would dive to the bottom of our shared bed and imagine we were Jacques Cousteau. We watched TV programmes about underwater sea diving. Men fought off sharks, fought each other, cut air-tubes with knives. We knew about aqua-lungs, mouthpieces, the bends and flippers. And they had those torpedo-like swimming aids with two handles and a little propellor. Whatever happened to those? I digress as always. I usually try to name wildflowers but don’t bother with garden ones – yet I can place a garden plant in a family or genus if it resembles a wild one. Before apps like PlantNet came along it was often tricky to name an unfamiliar flower. You could look at pictures, use dichotomous keys, or ask somebody who already knew. But once you’d cracked it you could spot it on a roadside verge while driving past at 40 mph. Once named, it had a look that was unmistakable. Before identification you agonised between similar illustrations in a book. I’m not so good with birds but I imagine the same applies. The bird has a certain general look and a quick impression is enough to nail it. Bird watchers call that sketchy impression the bird’s jizz. Stop sniggering at the back.
Tag / world
The Light of the World
The photograph above has a spooky feel – in part because of the subdued – almost crepuscular – light. This late-nineteenth-century building now houses a pottery. It looks like a Victorian chapel, and I imagine spirits threading through the windows. I picture restricted and repressed Victorians living and dying here.
It reminds me too of that painting by Holman Hunt – The Light of the World. I haven’t captured Christ in my photo – carrying a lantern – but I can imagine him knocking at that door. A Victorian chapel. A Victorian painting. It all comes together in my mind.
It also takes me back to sixties winter evenings spent collecting charity envelopes. My home village had many houses from this period, and I found those evenings magical. I wanted life to continue like that – though I knew the enchantment couldn’t survive the cold light of day.
A middle-class female churchgoer organised this envelope business. She had a daughter of about my age, and the three of us would go out together. On one occasion we had a more working-class district next on our to-do list. We must make that collection on a Friday night, the woman said. The working classes receive their pay packets on a Friday.
World Travel Clock
The arc of darkness on the flattened globe
Makes dawn in Tokyo and dusk in New York
And the rooted resident of either place
Suffers a leaden curse
The hovering traveller comes down to earth
And glimpses the sickly morning in passing
From taxi or train
Its sadness softened
By detachment and transit
The capitalists of travel flatter and beguile
That you remain untouched by filthy history
And the dusty brownish lands below extend
Like an atlas
Open and tame
Customer you are and, as such, deserve
What you ordinarily never feel deserving of
You play at wealth without the millions
You live the reassuring language primer life
Enquiring the whereabouts of this or that
Preferring perhaps a double to a twin
Asking for the nearest ATM
Feeling perhaps that your wishes matter
Blackthorn 