Cupola

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We gathered here one evening. It was me, Nick, Nige and Lindsay and some others. Among those others I’m remembering now may have been a guy who had previously threatened to beat me up owing to an offence involving his younger sister and a playfully thrown turd. But that was then. Weeks later and somehow placated, he had become, to a surprise I can still recall, a regular if peripheral member of a scallywag gang that had little to do except hang around underneath motorways.

‘Let’s get some fire,’ someone said. This meant a whip round and chipping in for a gallon of four star and then a walk to over to Texaco. As before it would begin with a stroll to Lindsay’s house to get the fuel can his dad kept in his shed and then a quick run down the Plaza to sort out the juice while someone else located the milk bottles. This time it was the turn of me and Nick. After our friend had got the five litre container, everyone divvied up the coins and we set off.

The forecourt was quiet as I filled up the can. I paid and the woman behind the counter didn’t say anything to me except a cursory thanks. When I got back I pointed this out to Nige who’d got hassled before and everyone laughed. He told me to fuck off and said it must’ve been a different lady. The empties were sourced from the doorsteps of houses in Tudor Street. Evening time they were all just outside, rinsed and ready. Somebody had got hold paper for the fuses, too. We were away.

In my hand the bottle felt cold and weighty. Filling them three quarters full we’d learnt was the optimum balance of risk and reward. Too much and you chanced an evening in Chepstow burns and too little of course and it wasn’t worth a toss. Razzamatazz was where it was at and that’s why, without warning, I threw it straight up, as hard as I could. It was a stupid thing to do but then that’s a given when you’re fifteen.

When I picture it now, I’m outside that nefarious huddle and from a distance, can see our loose silhouette, and suddenly from within that same shadow, a yellow seed of light that shoots up towards the concrete underbelly of the M4, the whispery whoosh and flutter of flame, then bang, an almighty bloom of fire and…

‘Faaaccckkk!!!’ Everyone running in different directions. Petrol raining down, burning and luminous. Soles scratching, accelerating on the stoney dirt, screams of laughter echoing deep. ‘Jeeeezuz…’ And on they went, these protests, these howls, shouted from unseen corners of shelter, until finally quieting so all you could pick up was the soft particular sound of flame falling. The incendiary glow, too, so quick to take the darkness, returned it just before a voice started up again. Now though, it was softer, hurt almost. It was the new guy.

What I remember next is sprinting. Faster than I ever had before sprinting, thinking, panicking, ‘I’ve burnt him, burnt him…’ We all got there at the same time. Everyone, me too, touched him, patted him, feeling to see if he was okay because we couldn’t see a thing. It was very dark in the place he’d taken cover.

‘You okay? I thought you were..’ ‘There’s a dog there,’ and he pointed to the foot of one of the big columns. ‘Dog? What you mean?’ ‘Just fucking look.’ There was still that hurt. Nobody made jokes. We went to look. ‘I can’t see anything,’ one of the boys said. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘When I saw it I dropped my lighter, I bent down to pick it up, it was all wet.’ Somebody still had some paper and they lit it and made a torch. We walked over to where he said he’d been. Then we found the dog.

In the uneven light you could still make out it had been a Labrador. Big but young maybe. The jaw was torn back. The two front legs were there but the hind ones weren’t. The ribcage was like an open black hollow and the guts, all the inside parts, were a spill, in places shiny. It was bad. We were all silent except for dry breathy words of disbelief. We walked away from it and carried on until we got into some streetlight. The new guy looked at me, showed me his hand. There was stuff on it. He was upset, angry as well. ‘See what I mean. I ain’t fucking burnt, am I.’ I said sorry to him.

The conversation about how and why a dog could end up like that, in the place were it was, kept going for an hour. So, too, about the who and how we should tell. I honestly can’t remember what was decided on but it couldn’t have involved me. If it had, that’s something I’d recall and could mention now but I can’t.

Lines

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I was hellbent on getting a picture. Holding the camera again felt purposeful in a way it hadn’t for a long time and this was good. The growing distance between me and any kind of creative endeavour was an uneasy one. Anyway, composing and recomposing, moving all the pieces within a frame, changing the distances between one point and the next, like a testing of different balances – where the omission of one detail works and where another might not – then making a choice and immortalising a scene reacquainted me with a rare satisfaction.

This photo was taken just minutes before my Friday morning class, (a breezy four hour stroll through adverbs of frequency and basic tenses with a dozen high rolling Chinese). With a nine o’clock start  fast approaching and diminishing opportunities, habit returned me to the staircase just outside the hallway. As before, the ready made geometry and strong shapes were persuasion enough and I took out my camera. Then, in that same instant, through steps we can only begin to see, came a very unexpected sun with spokes of light that printed on the wall a pattern of parallel lines. This intervention turned an unremarkable study into pleasing play of form and contrast. Meaningful joy ensued.

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Hastily wielded: LX3, ISO400, f4, 1/640

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TT

I’m lovin it

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In a number of my earlier posts I’ve had good reason, I believe, to spend a little time on the words, to fashion something commensurate for the image they will support. It’s an undertaking I’ve mostly enjoyed, occasionally struggled with, though too often been frustrated by. It’s never straightforward, ultimately, getting down the lines that must communicate, sometimes at once, the changing light on the tall, hard sides of a metropolitan sunrise, (the ember red of first light, the bruisey blue of shadow). Or then, those that can negotiate, familiarise and then capture the solitariness of city life (or its counter, the escape). It’s the stuff, the alchemy even, of distillation. Of the picture, of the moment, of the same stirring impetus that once pressed the shutter that now presses the keys. For within both lies an uncomplicated ambition to reach.

This time however almost none of the above applies. Why? Because the centrepiece of this post, as can be seen in the photo, shows a man in the exalted throws of a very personal kind of ecstasy, recumbent on a chair whose makers probably hadn’t envisioned either its quite extraordinary levels of comfort or evident versatility, and whose owners, McDonalds, similarly didn’t picture it’s use for anything beyond a burger and an altogether different kind of shake.

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I found this shot recently. I remember taking it, of course. It was in a McDonalds not far from where I used to live, below a station called Mikawashima. What do I remember about Mikawashima? It’s where I used to start my Saturday journeys, when I would go and see Kashiwa Reysol, emboldened by a cold Let’s Liosk Asahi inside me and a second in my hand. Good days. Also, it’s where I went when my bike got ‘towed’ after I had parked it in the wrong place, and the subsequent recovery costing me five large. Finally, it’s where I took the picture for the post entitled Cosy. It’s not the best part of town.

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An LX3 snap.