Some more photos.

Here are some more photos that I have taken, they are taken in all different places at different times in my life. I like them because they are a bit arty-farty.

Knock-Knock

This photo was actually taken by accident I think, in India, in a small roadside eatery probably. I nearly deleted it, but then decided I actually really liked it. I'm not entirely sure why. Just think its an interesting composition and shot. What do you think? Do you think I should have deleted it? Or do you like it too?

 Many Monroes

This was taken in Bangkok, Thailand at a very famous very fabulous lady boy show in a fancy pants hotel, I can't remember its name. I think it has a similar feel to "Tease" another photo I have taken, it is in my previous photography post. 

Intoxication 

I love this photo. I have named it intoxication for two reasons, 1) the two people in it are very drunk and 2) they are also both intoxicated with lust. Later this night they were so desperate to copulate that they did so in a dormitory with 11 other people trying to sleep. After they were kicked out of the first dormitory for obvious reasons they moved into mine, where the proceeded to finish on the sleeping mat next to mine in what can only be described as a continuous bunk bed our free dorm. I woke up later that night because the man in the left of the photo had rolled on top of me in his drunken sleep whilst still stark naked. When I woke up the girl in the right of the photo, furious, she thought the situation hilarious. I (at the time) did not. Now a few years later I can see the funny side, am feel that through this little story I have got her back some what.

This photo was taken on a very drunken night on a beach in the Cam Pot region of Cambodia. The for the most part jubilant and fun however there was a dark undertone to it. The same dark undertone there is to every night out in a part of Cambodia tourist visit. Cambodia has a booming sex tourism industry, and child prostitution is rye. In the tourist/ traveler populated areas bars and beaches amongst the revelers and there are young girls, wearing lots of make up and revealing clothes hovering around the bar area or, on the arm of some vile ex-pat or American man. The thing about this scene that makes me the most angry is the fact that this foul industry is not funded by local Cambodian men, it is funded by Westerners, the majority European and American, who go to Cambodia purely for this vile trade. Those men made me sick and the thought of them still does. It made me feel ashamed to be British. How ever the plight of those young girls, was just one of the many social injustices that I witnessed on my travels across India and Asia. So many injustices, and such an over whelming feeling of helplessness as for the most part there is nothing you can do to right them. 

It was however a enjoyable evening,full of drunken shenanigans, photographs and friendship forming. A night I think I will never remember, for many reasons ranging from the macabre to the comedic.

Surreal: The Open Road

On the back of a motorbike, driving through the vast flat north Cambodian landscape as the sun set. It was a moment of true beauty. This moment was so profound, so perfect in invoked feelings of ultimate freedom, the limitlessness of possibility, the awesome beauty and power of nature and the pure love that evoked in me. Love of nature, love of Cambodia, love for Katie who was driving the bike I was sitting on the back of for driving me and so enabling me to have such a perfect moment. The best thing about this moment is that it went for many moments! The road was long and stretched out ahead of us and I got to enjoy this feeling of the open road, with the vast expanse of rural Cambodian landscape lit in stunning pinks, oranges and purples for the entire length of the sunset. With the wind in my hair and the setting sun on my face I was content, marveling at the strange regularity of the landscape and pondering if the reason the  country was so flat was because is the most bombed country on the earth or if it was just the natural landscape of the area. I want to travel again, but I know this time, when I leave I won’t come back. Not for many years anyway, so it is hard, I have a lot I would be leaving behind. But as this photo illustrates, I have a lot waiting for me, and SO much left to explore, experience, absorb.

Life is in the Details.

A woe be-trodden man sits across from me on an unusually empty Bakerloo Line train. Its that time in the morning when most people have just sat down at their desk ready to start their days work.

This man is unusual. He is wearing a navy blue suit, black shirt, black tie. However these all are filthy. The left breast and collar of his blazer are coated in a yellowish, powdery filth. His hair is a mess. Bedraggled, grey and too-long. He doesn't look like he has brushed his hair since it was last cut, which by the length looks to be over a year ago. He is carrying a significantly sizable stack of different newspapers, an old paperback and a Mars bar. Intermittently pinching he bridge of his nose with his forefingers. He seems agitated and despondent in equal measure. After fidgeting with the wrapper and hand placing his weather beaten, unshaven face in his hands a while longer he opens the Mars bar with a flurry and casts the wrapper off with some vigor. It flutters into the air and his attention is then focused on he chocolate bar which he devours, holding it delicately, but adoringly; the resulting impression us that he us caressing it softly as he consumes it, much the way a baby grips and fondles their mothers breast whilst feeding.

Once the chocolate bar is sliding down his gullet, his attention turns to the top newspaper of his excessive pile. He unfolds it clearing his throat, and begins to peruse the monochrome pages. He is more distracted from this than he was his chocolate bar. Glancing up and down the carriage around him. Looking anxious and withered in his old age. His eyes so woeful and bloodshot, a basset hound longing to be let in out of the cold, begging silently at the garden door. He looks pitiful. As he glances around I hope he doesn't realise that I am writing about him. I am sure he does not; he seems entirely engrossed with his own unusual, seemingly sorrowful activities.

 ~*~

What is this man's story? His suit and expensive (but muck splattered) looking boots spoke of former respectability. Perhaps he was once a noteworthy academic, a lecturer. From the generation where it was the societal norm for a wife to do her husbands washing and 'mother' a man into his old age. Perhaps his dutiful wide had died some time back and he no longer knew how to look after himself. Perhaps he had become befuddled in his grief. Perhaps he had once held down a very respectable job in the city, and had seen a woeful decline into senility. Perhaps he had lost that high-flying job and his wife had left him because she couldn't handle the strain of watching the man she knew and loved fade away in front of her, perhaps she couldn't handle the strain of caring for him more and more as his faculties failed him and he recognises her less and less. Perhaps he was never married! Perhaps he was homosexual, perhaps he had no interest in romance or starting a family. Perhaps he has never done anything noteworthy in his entire life. Perhaps he is a tortured genius, or the force behind modern politics. Perhaps he lived a life as selfless and courageous as Nelson Mandela. Perhaps he was a daemon, an un-discovered serial killer, who will become the most notorious since Jack the Ripper. (Perhaps until very recently he had been a popular tabloid journalist until his newspaper was shut down and amid facing allegations of illegal journalistic malpractice had lost his mind and had a never sharp decline into what I saw today.) Who he was, why he was that way and how he came to appear so unusual I (we) will never know.

He is just one of hundreds of people who pass us by every day, who I encounter in this vast urban metropolis I call home. For the most part one can only get a glimpse. The way people present them selves is like a window into who they are, and a snippet of their story. Everyone has a story. Every thing has a story, every object, every stone, every garment, every piece of discarded waste has a story. My part of His story ended at Paddington station.

 

The End

London Transport Encounters Part I

Waiting Room Ramblings

Antsy. Like ice cream in my pants(y). I feel like I am zinging and buzzing. Full of hyperactive energy. Pop. POP. Bubble. Whizz. I want to "Scream at the top of my lungs What's going o-ON?..." Too buzzing to read the paper, and this airless, soulless hospital waiting room feels like there is stiffing me. It literally feels like there is not enough oxygen in the air, or air the atmosphere.

To my left are three large windows looking out on to a scene of urban regeneration. Lush green trees, thick with multitudinous shades of green foliage. The rich, varied shades of green set against the sheer, stark dark glass facade; modern minimalist industrial architecture. Behind the reflective, repetitious panels one can just about make out the glare of florescent office lighting. The far left of the scene is more interesting in many ways. Its is a scene under construction. A towering red crane working on -one presumes- a building that looks startled and naked with bare grey breeze-blocks exposed to the elements. Vulnerable. On closer inspection each floor is numbered in big blue figures,

2

3

4

5

I wish I had my camera. These windows are inciting me to climb up onto their sills and lean my head right out, so far out that the adrenaline suddenly makes my heart thump aggressively against my chest. As your body becomes aware of the imminent danger such a height presents to you.


As I have been writing this, I have been gazing quite intently out of the 3 large windows, which so happen to be above a row of seats in the waiting room. In one of these seats sits a woman who seems to find it profoundly strange that I should be looking above her head, out the window and writing in my notebook. She keeps giving me strange looks. I am finding it tremendously difficult to care.

This helped my fizzles to pop and simmer down.

Meet the Boys

My brothers are quite simply two of the best people to exists ever. Fact. I may well be biassed, but I am also right. Here is some pictorial evidence.

Jester Festival Laughter

The Bude Attitude

The Skies the Limit

Still Learning

I  think I have proven my point. 

Love Eran

Love Theo

Sleepy Sunday PostSecret Favourites

I am utterly and completely exhausted so this post is probably going to have even more spelling mistakes and typo errors than my first! I do apologise for not proof reading my photos post. I went to the Tate Modern on Wednesday with a very dear friend and saw three rather brilliant exhibitions. Or actually really only two and half as the third we didn't have time to do justice so we shall return when said dear friend is back in the big smoke. I have written a draft review of the Miro exhibition which I will post on here when it does not hurt just to have my eyes in focus! Yesterday I worked at the Foo Fighters huge concert/festival in Milton Keynes. Absolutely brilliant gig, great atmosphere; the end of the Death Cab for Cutie set was just marvellous, moving and beautiful in the way that only death cab (and The Postal Service) know how. Biffy Clyro were epic, lots of rocking popular tunes and sexy long hair, and then the Foos, were, of course IMMENSE. I don't even really like their new material, and am of the belief that after In Your Honour they haven't released a memorable song. But Dave, Dave, Oh Dave. He is just such a legend or as the NME awards crowned him "God Like Genius" Sixteen years worth of material meant they played a huge, lengthy set, full of classic hits and new more recent stuff. About half way through their set my heart actually started to hurt with how much I adored Dave Grohl! When he screams that tuneful grunge scream I want to burst with adrenaline and kiss him. I was dancing away behind the bar getting all sorts of looks, however found it very hard to care. Great gig, great shift, god awful journey home. Journey home resulted in my cancelling my shift to work the second day of the same gig (missing Jimmy Eat World and Dave being a sex god/genius/rock angel again... Sob) and being so damn shattered today that I feel incapable of doing anything apart from grumble. SO instead of my Miro review which I had intended to post today you shall have this. A selection of my favourite PostSecrets from the past two weeks. If you don't know Post Secret you should. It is lovely and if I miss a week I feel like I have genuinely missed out. This weeks selection is a good one too. So check out

www.postsecret.com

I feel it is important to point out that these are not my secrets and that PostSecret is not my ingenious creation. By posting them on here I am in no way trying to take credit for any of them, they simply touched me and thought they may resonate with some of you too.

Right now I am going to have a bath and go to bed before I have a screaming tired tantrum to rival that of my three year old brother Theo (Titch). Goodnight.

Like three-year-olds sometimes twenty-three-year-olds get grumpy, grizzly and need naps.