OCCUPIED COUNTRY

Things May Come And Things May Go But The Art School Dance Goes On Forever…..

A rather unpleasant weekend the other week. Woken in the middle of Friday night by an agitated stomach, I ended up spending all of Saturday and most of Sunday in bed or in the bathroom. As I lay on there on Saturday morning I was fearing the worst and considering the possibility of swine flu: aching limbs? – Check!, High temperature? – Check! Upset stomach? – Check! But then……Sore Throat?…erm no! Sneezes? Ermmmm no again. Whatever it was it wasn’t swine flu but it laid me low and buggered off just in time for me to to go to work on Monday morning. I was knackered though and when I got home I had a bit of tea (dinner) and then went to bed at 7:00pm. I woke at 7:30am a different man. I wonder how many others have got it and claimed they had succumbed to the pandemic?

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I see the body overseeing the Olympics have reneged on their 2004 promise of tickets starting at £15 with free transport thrown in. I know, I couldn’t believe it either. Us lesser folk should have understood however that the 2004 prices were ‘indicative’ and based on dollars and consequently, despite the best intentions of the lying bastards honourable men and women faced with an arduous task the price will, unfortunately have to rise. But all is not lost! Paul Deighton the Chief Executive of the London organising committee has waffled promised “the principle still applies that a very significant chunk of our tickets will be highly affordable so we can get families there.”

Hmmmm there’s a lot of variables there aren’t there? Unquantifiable variables too. Have we a definition for ‘very significant’, ‘chunk’ or ‘highly affordable’? Sounds like vagueness worthy of a gold medal to me. I know this much, if you can’t peg the ticket price at £15 now I dread to think what it will have risen to in three years time I would also imagine that the ‘cheap’ tickets will not get you within a million miles of a sexy event – track and field finals for example. Still, I expect the fencing will be nice and well worth the £100+ for the spectacle of your family watching three entertaining bouts, on top of the hundreds spent on rail travel from your northern home and the rip-off room rate in the closest hotel you could get – in Northampton.

Still, at least London’s getting some top class sporting facilities. Super.

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So, Barcelona can acquire Ibrahimovitch for the measly sum of £40million PLUS Samuel Eto’o AND the loan of Hleb and they are not killing football with their ostentatious displays of wealth. Real Madrid can stump up £56million for Kaka and £80million for the show pony and everything’s fine. Business as usual, no need to panic, the activities of clubs with a God-given right to pay mega-bucks won’t distort the market at all. It’s only when Johnny-come-latelys like Manchester City spend a few quid that the ire of FIFA, EUFA and Sir Alex is collectively aroused. We’re a small club with a small mentality apparently, well according to Fergie that is. I guess that’s why he’s upset at us spending big, although I can’t remember him having a go at big spenders when it was him and Liverpool etc doing the big spending.

“Everything comes and goes just like lovers and styles of clothes…….

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I’ve borrowed a sophisticated scanner off a mate of mine and have started the protracted task of scanning my negatives from the late 1970s to the dawn of the digital age. What has annoyed me though is the amount of specks of dust I have on them considering they have been filed away in a purpose-bought negative storage system. This means time-consuming cloning out of dust spots in photoshop which is tedious as you can imagine. It’s a shame because even on a medium setting quality-wise the resultant images are very good.

It’s been an education looking back at the prints though. Were Dearest and I really that slim? Was my hair once free of grey? Did I honestly wear shorts that…well…short – and revealing? Were Eldest and Youngest once so young?

My family were my models and I photographed them endlessly with my Zenith EM and, later, my beloved Pentax K1000. The spare bedroom became a darkroom and many happy hours disappeared as I lost myself in the magic of creating images in the spooky red glow.

All these years later I’m so glad I did. I now have a portfolio of a young family at work and at play, at home and elsewhere. Snaps of the ordinary days as well as the high days and holidays. On some of them the quality leaves something to be desired as I struggled to discover how to do it properly, but practically every negative is a hive of memories – places, things and people: some no longer with us.

There’s Dearest’s mother chatting in the street to her lifelong friend Stella. There’s my Dad playing football with his grandchildren. My granddad and grandmother and various uncles, cousins and acquaintances. I came across a few of Shughie and Ronald that have acquired an added poignancy knowing now what we didn’t know then.

What a bloody brilliant thing a camera is.

Here's a few.......