Things to do

Mass observation – Mon 2nd Feb

Yesterdays contact sheet felt incomplete (hence I’m writing a day late). Nevertheless I wanted to get something out because I was so pleased with the sparrow shot, but none of the other photos seemed to work together; they needed something else. I ended up running out of time before quiz night (oh yes!) and decided I’d sort it once I got home or just post the sparrow on its own. This turned out to be lucky because within minutes of arriving at the pub, I get a text from Tony saying, rather gnomically, ‘look at the moon’. If you get a message from someone saying something like that, you just have to obey, so, end of round one, off I trot outside and my god, he’s right: the most fantastic frost halo. Huge too.

So I then drag everyone else in my team out into the street, some less willing than others, but all agree it’s breathtaking. Liz takes a pic on her phone where you can just see it. Even the smartass team on the next table go out and have a look (I’m delighted that one of their number comes back inside a few minutes later and asks me what he was supposed to be looking at – ha! – one question you haven’t got the answer for eh?). So when the quiz and drinks are finished (we were only three points off winning this week. Team smartass won again, dammit…) on the way home I’m having a longer look at the moon and realise that it’s the last image I need for the contact sheet. Its bloody freezing out and I’m really struggling with the idea of staying in to have a cup of tea before venturing forth again but I know the moon is on the move and will disappear round the corner if I don’t do something now, so, find the tripod and the really wide angle lens, and head back downstairs.

Of course, this being Brighton, I open the front door only to trip over someone else, literally on my doorstep, with a camera and tripod. His friend has just facebooked the news and it’s a bit of a challenge for him now, especially after the lightning last summer. We chat a bit more and he heads off for the beach because he thinks he can get a better shot. Apparently his girlfriend is in the shower; this piece of information is somehow significant. I stay put because I reckon I can make the trees work for the image. I’m also wondering how long his girlfriend showers for. It’ll take him at least half an hour to get to the beach and back, probably a lot longer once he’s set up the camera and taken the pictures. Does he often just disappear while she’s having a wash?

.sparrow flight 2-2-15 (click for a bigger image)

Shoreham on Sea – Sun 25th Jan

A few miles out of Brighton travelling west is a place called Shoreham on Sea. Cross the bridge south onto the Brighton Road, take a left more or less immediately, and you will find the Shoreham houseboats. Given that one is actually an old minesweeper, another has a top deck made out of two halves of a bus, and that most of the others are cobbled together out of old cars, sheds, garden conservatories and any other conceivable kinds of scrap, the words ‘house’ and ‘boat’ might not immediately spring to mind when looking at them. Nevertheless, people have lived here in these extraordinary ramshackle dwellings for decades, in a small local community that is still resisting the standardisation and gentrification that infects so much of the rest of the world. I hope they survive for many years to come.

Shelter – Tues 13th Jan

So you find yourself in town without a raincoat and suddenly out of nowhere there’s a downpour so heavy everyone is running for doorways and bus stops and you curse the weather and how long are you going to have to stand cramped under a tiny and inadequate awning with some bloody smoker because it seems endless and you also curse your luck and indeed you are unlucky because had you been out in the open like on the beach you could have seen the gathering storm grow from a hairy dog to an elephant to a gigantic whale till finally it becomes the huge upswept wing of the angel of obliteration before it passes overhead shedding rain like tattered curtains but before you know it dwindles from the apocalypse to merely a gigantic whale and then an elephant before becoming once more a hairy and retreating dog and then the sun bursts through and you can hardly see for all the dazzlement.

1000 rulers – Fri 9th Jan

If, on a winter’s day when the wind is up, you find yourself in search of something, but not entirely sure what that something is, go and find a copse of young deciduous trees. It is important that they are growing close together; a small thicket of self-set saplings is best, of a kind you’d find in unmanaged woodland or derelict lots.

Then press your ear against one of the trunks, and wait, and listen.

Simulacra and Simulations – Mon 5th Jan

Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more the social microcosm, the miniaturized and religious revelling in real America, in its delights and drawbacks. You park outside, queue up inside, and are totally abandoned at the exit. In this imaginary world the only phantasmagoria is in the inherent warmth and affection of the crowd, and in that sufficiently excessive number of gadgets used there to specifically maintain the multitudinous affect. The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot – a veritable concentration camp – is total. Or rather: inside, a whole range of gadgets magnetize the crowd into direct flows; outside, solitude is directed onto a single gadget: the automobile. By an extraordinary coincidence (one that undoubtedly belongs to the peculiar enchantment of this universe), this deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized; Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade.

Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), p166

12 tips for Christmas – Weds 17th Dec

With Christmas only a few days away now, I have been giving some thought to one of the pitfalls we can be presented with on the morning itself; that of the exchange of gifts. Sometimes the overwhelming joy of receiving these tokens of love can leave us, quite literally, speechless with delight, and this silence can be misinterpreted as a lack of enthusiasm. To help you avoid this happening I’ve prepared twelve useful phrases to memorise and use upon unwrapping your gifts:

  1. Gosh it must have taken you ages to find something like that!
  2. How original!
  3. You’re so clever!
  4. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it!
  5. What an unusual colour!
  6. Does it do something?
  7. How thoughtful, I had an identical one a few years ago but it fell apart after a couple of hours!
  8. Is this bit supposed to move?
  9. Is it part of a pair?
  10. I remember when these first came out!
  11. Oh darling you know I like these, I gave you one exactly like it last year!
  12. That’s lovely dear.

Finally, if you simply can’t find the right words, a prolonged glassy smile while gazing directly into the eyes of the giver usually works a treat.

Hopefully that should cover most gift-opening situations. If you do use any of the above, please let me know how you got on. I am always happy to receive messages of gratitude. And if you find anyone saying some of these things to you, just reply: ‘What a useful website Umbrellage is! It’s such a shame Chris is away now till 28th December’.

Good Luck!

Deluge – Sat 6th Dec

‘Flooding is a form of behavior therapy based on the principles of respondent conditioning. It is sometimes referred to as exposure therapy or prolonged exposure therapy. As a psychotherapeutic technique, it is used to treat phobia and anxiety disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder. It works by exposing the patient to their painful memories, with the goal of reintegrating their repressed emotions with their current awareness’ *

For example, supposing a patient has a fear of spiders. Flooding, in this instance, would take the form of making them sit in a bath full of them. After this experience even if the patient were to come across a foot long tarantula chewing a brick it would, by comparison, be a mere walk in the park.

I am aware I didn’t do justice to the Christmas shopping experience in my photographs yesterday, so I though maybe I’d try some self-prescribed flooding today. I therefore spent a bit of time taking pictures in the middle of Churchill Square, Brighton’s mega-shopping Mall. True, if I’d wanted to go the whole way I would have gone and stood in the center of Topshop with my camera, but I think that might have led to some nasty additional contraindications like a night in a police cell. Anyway, I managed about twenty minutes and feel quite pleased with myself for doing so. The results are appended.

Did it work? I’ll tell you once I’ve had a nice relaxing bath of hot spiders.

*Full article: ‘Flooding (psychology), Wikipedia’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology)

Christmas Hits – Fri 5th Dec

Today I went Christmas shopping. You might not be able to tell from the corresponding set of photographs (something I consider a success, unlike the shopping). However, while perusing this year’s variations on novelty stocking fillers, I have been exposed to a large sample of seasonal number one pop-hit contenders, piped from speakers in various venues around town. This has led to my formulating a theory.

While during the rest of the year, singles from top artists tend to elaborate on the following variations:

  • Woo-oo-oo I’ve finally found the girl/boy of my dreams
  • Woo-oo-oo nobody makes me feel like you-oo-oo do-oo-oo
  • Woo-oo-oo how can I live my life now you’ve go-o-o-onnn and left me all alone?

I have discovered that the themes surfacing around Christmas are quite different, consisting of these topics:

  • Woo-oo-oo ITS CHRISTMAS and I’ve finally found the girl/boy of my dreams
  • Woo-oo-oo nobody makes me feel like you-oo-oo do-oo-oo at CHRISTMAS
  • Woo-oo-oo how can I live my life now you’ve go-o-o-onnn and left me all alone at CHRISTMAS?

Ok, I probably missed the ones about us all living together happily while unwrapping presents with Rudolph, but apart from that I think a pattern might be emerging…

Given the commercial returns on a good Christmas hit, as long as I can come up with a simple tune with a few sleigh bells in the background, I think I’ve found a formula that will guarantee me untold riches by this time next year.

See you in Bermuda