It’s a little like living in sandpaper, the coarseness of it takes a while to get used to, while it rubs away your corners and gets to the core of you. It exposes the truth of you. Snap, snap, snap. Celluloid snapshots of an ever-present alternative reality. I like the grit of it. There’s no pretence and no sheen. People are who they are down here. They’ve no time for strangers but hang about for long enough, blending into the brick walls and you’ll see some of the greatest acts of kindness and heroism here too. I don’t mean heroism in the way you’re thinking, I dare say. Not the sort of heroism that runs into burning buildings but the kind of heroism that thinks nothing of sacrificing its own needs and desires to give someone a happy moment or a smile. Everyday heroism, is what it is.
It’s been a while since I was there: things have moved on, passed by, grown up. I’m not the same either. But sometimes I like to go back, in my memories to how it was. Back to days of scalding teas in dirty cafes on the Coatsworth road, and a pint in a seedy pub a little way along, where the locals at the bar looked like they’d mug you given half a chance but behaved better than many of the ‘gents’ I know nowadays.
Living in the dirty side of town taught me lessons I wouldn’t have learnt anywhere else. Lessons about judging people and places. Lessons about the secrets that places like this hold. The beauty you find that most people are blind to the flourishes untended in the cracks. I suppose it tells you a little about me too, my flirtation with the seedier side of town. It becons to me, and seduces me with its whispers of secret dramas. I find myself enticed by the flashing neon promises and flirting with danger.
People walk by the dirty end of town, carefully avoiding coming in. Others scowl from the bus and wish this little blot on the landscape would shrivel up and disappear but I love it, and occasionally in my dreams, I still find myself scurrying along the road, flanked by little dirty shops, in a place that would never be trendy, but to me, was always friendly and real, especially in the middle of the night, when I went walking with my camera.
]]>Each slow breath I took was immaculately timed with the lurch of the bus and my intense focus, entirely detracted from the horrors of the journey, even to the extent that I didn’t notice the youth who looked like a young Richard E Grant who got on the bus shortly after me, smelling quite strongly of marijuana (Dude, seriously, it wasn’t even 9am – what gives?) at least until I’d finished.
Sure, it’s a hazard of doing something that is best performed in peace and quiet in crowded, public spaces but that’s the thing. This is life and life’s not perfect. Sometimes you need to take those moments wherever you can find them and if you can find them for ten minutes on a bus, amongest the noise and chatter and smell, then you can find them anywhere.
Sometimes it’s easier to settle yourself away from the world and blissfully trip away to a calmer, more transquil headspace and we all need that from time to time, however we find it. But sometimes we don’t get that time and space. Sometimes life gets a rush on and we’re ‘too busy’ to be thinking about taking those ten minutes for ourselves.
But you can always carve out a little time, whether it’s meditating in front of a slot machine in Vegas or on a bus in the middle of Somerset, sometimes you’ve just got to take a moment and find your centre while the craziness whirls and eddies around you. It’s still going to be there in 10, 20 or 30 minutes time.
As for maybe looking a little crazy … hell, I live near Glastonbury. No-one’s going to bat an eyelid!
]]>I was nervous. Being in front of the camera is not my favourite location. I feel naked and vulnerable, and having consoled myself with chocolate brownies after my Dad passed away, was more than aware that I’m not currently looking my best. I was expecting to look acceptable but I’d figured beautiful was an option that had leapt out of the window to save itself a long time back.
The first few photos that came on screen were family shots of us and the hounds, and were lovely momentoes of the day. They were bright and bubbly and fun. Pictures of a family that were happy and loved each other. It couldn’t fail to make you smile.
… and then the photos seagued into the individual shots. I was dreading it. My hands had already crept up to my face, ready to cover my eyes and my heart was beating ten to the dozen. And then THEY appeared and my breath stopped for a moment. I blinked. I shook my head and I heard myself say ‘Oh My God, I never knew I could look like that’ and there it was. There were three. One was cute, and cuddly and wintry and warm and one was all wild eyes and sexy (Me! Imagine that!) and then there was THE ONE. It didn’t have the definable fun factor or sexy elements that the other two did but it had a something that caught me perfectly. It was slightly sultry, mysterious with a hint of my mind’s on other things. It looked on the outside the way I felt on the inside. It’s a work of art.
THEN we got to sis’s shots. Christ she’s photogenic, although she’d never believe me. She had a couple of stunning shots but she too had a ONE and it’s fabulous. Despite her preoccupation with being perfectly coiffed all the time (Joan Collins, eat your heart out) her amazing picture had a really grungy, moody element to it. Almost slightly dark and dangerous. Like you could imagine a classy Courtney Love in a ballgown, leaning against a brick wall in an alley on her way to the Oscars, ready for a dangerous rendezvous. It’s the sort of image that seems to talk to you; it challenges you to try and take her on, provokes you to try with the knowledge she could squash you like a bug. It suits her. It suits the conversation we had over dinner after the shoot.
As well as a beautiful reminder of a fabulous day, the pictures are more than that. Amongst them, there is not only a tale of our relationship but a reminder to us, of who and what we are. Lest we ever forget.
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Today I went to a photo shoot with Venture Studios, which was a 30th Birthday present from my sister (she’s such an inspired wee genius!) and had the MOST fun and the doggies were SOOOO well behaved. Getting dressed this morning was a thought provoking experience and I’ll tell you why.
The studio had suggested wearing and bringing along props that were reflective of your personality and interests. So as I was dragging on my clothes this morning, I automatically reached for a pair of odd socks (can you say that?) for good luck and that got me thinking of the small, almost unconscious, things that we do that make unique in ways we don’t even notice.
My odd sock habit has its depths in my University days, when I would catch the bus in to lectures when the weather was grim and I didn’t fancy a four mile hike in the rain. The bus stop was a five minute walk away across a field, and the buses were often double deckers or bendy buses that jammed us together like sardines. At any rate, I had a spate of bad luck on the buses in my first year, when I consistently fell down, got pushed over or some other calamity (see reasons why I hate buses, many of these ocurred during that fortnight) would befall me whenever I was on a bus. It lasted about 2 weeks, and at the end of the fortnight, I had bruises on bruises and could cheerfully have done without seeing a bus ever again. I was, in fact, on the verge of turning in my bus pass completely.
One fine day, I overslept and when I woke up and realised the time, I grabbed whatever clothes were to hand (I must have made a fine sight!) and threw them on including a pair of odd socks and headed for the bus stop and found, to my undisguised delight, that I had not only an uneventful journey but that I made my lecture with minutes to spare. I could only put this unlikely ocurrance down to the odd socks (or blind luck) and ever since, if I’ve felt the need for a little extra luck, I’ve worn mismatched socks. (Clearly I should have remembered to do that on evil, everything sucks Tuesday, shouldn’t I?)
What quirky habits do you have?
]]>This evening, we gathered at approximately 4pm to watch them gather as the sun went down, and as we slowly lost feeling in our limbs, it was more than made up for by the sight of tens of thousands, if not more, of starlings swarming through the sky like a giant amorphous cloud. The photos don’t do the experience justice but they may give you the beginnings of an idea …
I’m trying very hard to remind myself that it’s a time to prepare for a new year and a new start and a time to be very positive. 2010 is potentially a very exciting time for me and will hopefully be filled with the opportunities I have been dreaming of and am hoping to put into action this year.
It’s not a time for me to be staring at myself, complete with chipped teal toenail polish, untamed frizzy hair, empty house, comfort clothes that would give Gok Wan nightmares, and a pile of dishes and think, well darling, what the fuck happened there then? Nor is it a time for thinking that I’ve just turned 30 and work in a shop doing something I’m not passionate about while I watch my finances demand that I live less on a budget and more of a shoestring.
This is a time for PRIORITIES, woman! Appearances can be tidied as can houses and it’s not outsides which are to be remedied but dreams that need to be bolstered. It’s a time to remember that every disappointment that was visited upon me in 2009 may well have happened for a reason and can only serve to drive me closer to actually achieving my dreams. It is NOT a time to lose heart, to stop dreaming, wishing and hoping.
Every dream has a rough path and the sleepless nights and moments of wondering if you’re crazy for wanting this instead of a more traditional ‘normal’ path, but overcoming these things is what makes the achievements all the sweeter. I suppose to an extent, it makes me feel like a heroine upon a quest, proving myself worthy of the prize by succeeding at the challenges I’ve been set. Since I rather like the idea of being a heroine in a story of my own devising, I’ll be carrying on with my quest in search of my treasure … but I’ll be buggered if I’ll be doing it without RUM!
]]>The Knicker Lady is a charmingly comical romp through the history of intimate apparel since the Victorian ages, as told by Rosemary Hawthorne, Vicar’s wife, Fashion historian, and Joyce Grenfell of Knickers. I laughed so much that I sat in my seat shaking with tears running down my face until my sides ached.
Starting with her recent publications, we have Knickers!: An Intimate Appraisal
Starting with giggles over draughty Victorian drawers, we enter a historical re-enactment like no other. A history lesson through the intimate apparel of the times. Large drawers, smaller ones, woolly ones and lacy ones. Flirtatious ones and some that could double as a chastity belt. The variety of clothing is almost as astonishing as her knowledge of the subject and the humour with which it was presented.
Have a look at the video below to see the Knicker Lady talking on her favourite subject:
So, if at the end of it, modern-day knickers are all about feeling that little bit good and beautiful and sexy, I’ll leave you to wonder what she was wearing that made her describe her ensemble as a cross between a wet fish and a half used condom.