Only a day later and the only signs of Pride having happened are a few leftover shop displays and a larger number of multicoloured feathers than usual to be found in gutters around town. The ordinariness is something of a relief, though it’s taking me a while to adjust from photographing human carnage to refocusing on quieter things. Mattresses continue to come and go, but most worthy of note, alongside the broken furniture left by the bins, I’m now beginning to find piles of school textbooks. Is this something to do with the approaching A-Level results, due to be released in only a few days?

Anyone leaving school would have done so a few weeks ago and I was surprised not to see more of this paraphernalia appear in the streets then, but maybe it takes the impending receipt of a grade to trigger this desire to put away childish things? Go and get a proper job, or not; have a family, or not; go to university, or not, what are you going to make of yourself? It seems unfair that people who are still only children are pushed to answer these impossible questions. Perhaps it’s because so many adults cannot, that we demand it of them instead.