Way of Seeing

The end of the Photographic Week and I feel that I should be enumerating the lessons learned, the techniques honed and the boundaries broken. Well, I’m not sure that I can. I have been looking at things in a fairly maniacal way as everything that has come within my ambit has magically transformed itself into possible material for a picture: talk about John Berger, a Way of Seeing has almost become a Way of Life! But not quite. The real test will be to see (quite literally) if I continue to take photographs; and I deem them worthy of visibility! We shall see.

Today was notable for my almost suffering an attack of Boots Enclosure Syndrome. This is a syndrome which is isolated to Boots the Chemist in Cardiff. It comprises a feeling of heat followed by an overwhelming desire to get out of the store, if necessary though people and any other obstructions. The more prosaic among you would probably say this is just a simple case of common or garden claustrophobia. But, I should point out that this only occurs in the run up to Christmas.

When I was a very small child, in the days when you could park legally in the small streets behind M&S (in the same days that it usually had a much longer name) and usually find a parking space, I used to hate the store. I remember that I couldn’t see over the counters and it was always too bright and there was nothing engaging for me in the store. It was also the place when, bored and tired, I traipsed after my dad, staring without interest at the back of his trousers which was my level of vision. Up around and down I went with the wooden walls of the counters blocking all sight on both sides and moving material the only point of interest. When the material moved, I moved; when it stopped, I stopped. After some time of this labyrinthine wandering had passed and the material had stopped and so had I, the inhabitant of the trousers looked down at me at the same time as I looked up – and it wasn’t my dad. I can still remember the sense of utter isolation and betrayal mixed with guilt: a useful melange of emotions which I have experienced many times since, but for somewhat different reasons in somewhat different circumstances!

I never had good memories of M&S but sort of grew up with it as a datum point in my existence. My mothers dream was to wake up one morning and find a branch of M&S magically opening in the parade of shops at the top of our road or to find herself locked in the store with all the lights on at night. I never did find out if this fantasy was about having the store all to herself of going on an orgy of taking whatever took her fancy.

Talking of taking: there was once a power cut in the centre of Cardiff where a local mains transformer or something blew up and Howells Store was plunged into darkness. This would not have fazed my mother for a moment as she had a sort of sixth sense when it came to navigating in, through and around shops in the city; no, it was the reaction of those people who found themselves in the store and in total moral vacuity. Apparently, when the darkness descended people just grabbed whatever was around them and stuffed it in all hiding places around their person. The staff in Howells had to station themselves at all the exits and check people as they left and (I hope) gently take back the property ‘stolen’. People who were there said that the stuff taken had nothing to do with what people actually wanted; it was just the proximity which was the operative factor. So one man was found with pockets filled with ladies knickers, and what, after all, would any man want with ladies knickers?

Boots the Chemists, however, was a different matter. Boots was filled with interesting and desirable things, like paper clips and drawing pins. For years I thought that I had a guilty obsession with stationery until I discovered that it is quite common for kids to amass quantities of ink cartridges, or staples or thin leads for propelling pencils. And then, miser like, let them trickle through fingers, without ever find a use for them. Yes you would use things like ink cartridges, but never in the quantity which you possessed. That was the thing: you had a surplus; you could become an emperor in the number of paper clips that you owned, fabulously wealthy, rich beyond the dream of Croesus – as long as the unit of currency in your state was the paperclip or the staple. Boots was the place which had an Ali Baba treasury of small things: small things sold in large quantities. You could buy 100 rubber bands for next to nothing; and they were in different colours and different lengths; useful and sensible and so many of them! I still feel quite weak when I remember going from counter to counter all of which were packed with things that I could afford and by spending six pence I would have dozens of whatever it was: from reinforcing rings for the holes in file paper to coloured pencils which would never actually be used but would disappear through constant shaving to keep the point sharp and ready for the use it would never have.

So, why in a store which has formed the man who is writing now do I have these almost overwhelming impulses to get the hell out of there? The store has changed: the muted lighting has given way to the clarity of M&S intensity; the homely, rattling and pliable floorboards have been replaced by harsh, unyielding composite flooring, and the acres of stationery have been replaced by the garish shoddy of any old store – and the ceilings are lower and the heat higher and it’s just plain sense to get out of there when those automata Christmas shoppers have that single minded look in their unseeing eyes!

To finish this week of photos I will leave you with a final image. This one was found well within the two minute limit of my home that I set myself (the swans were stretching that limit a tad, but not that much on an empty road!) but, with this image I have to keep reminding myself what it represents!

I think it looks quite dramatic and pleasing; but do you know what it is?

I look forward to your guesses.