Last night, from our club pool. By our backyard. As every night. Used to be actual live bursting fireworks. Drones is better, don’t you think?
There were plenty more animals and cutesy drone-thingies in the sky. But I’ll leave it at that one octopus. As with actual fireworks, “enough” is pretty quickly enough! Don’t you think?
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| Mazu (妈祖), goddess of the sea |
I took this photo in Russia: an abandoned factory, in an abandoned town, in an abandoned countryside, of an abandoned ideology. Where lives were lived in quiet desperation.
It was on our cross Russia trip, four men in a Voxy, from Vladivostok to Moscow in the Spring of 2013.
Last night I listened to a radio play on YouTube. H.G. Wells’ “The Door in the Wall”. Wells's door is “the” Door; it is his missed opportunities. This one above is just “a” door. One of many. Of many missed opportunities. In Soviet Russia and in today’s Russkyie Putiniskyie.
There are abandoned villages and towns all across the vast plains of Siberia. We drove through them.
This photo was served up to me in my daily feed. Just after I’d listened to the Wells story. But, no, I’m sure AI had nothing to do with it….
Piazza del Popolo, Fontana del Nettuno, Rome, 1975.
As we wend our way from London to India, in our clapped out Ford Anglia.
Imagine. Four young folks, Aussies, living in London, early twenties, two blokes, two sheilas. Boyfriends and girlfriends. I’d been given this Ford Anglia by an Aussie mate who was leaving London. Broke as he was, as we all were, this rusted pile of junk was too crappy, even for him, to bother trying to sell.
So I decided to drive the “hippy trail”, London to India. Why not? I figured we’d go as far as we could and dump it…whenever and wherever.
I needed some company. “Shall we try it?” I asked my girlfriend, my mates. “You beauty!” they answered.
So off we went. Simple as that. A spare tyre strapped to the roof was all our prep. Oh, the magic of youth. The spontaneity. Oh, the stupidity. The foolishness.
We ended up making it all the way to India. The Anglia stopped right there in New Delhi. And never went again. It was like “well I’ve done my job, now get out”. We gave it away to the Delhi police.
Our route: London, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India.
Number of pictures we took along the way: about seven. Imagine today. You’d have photos coming out your ears: on your phone, on your laptop, on your iPad… instagram, blogs, vlogs, dogs, YouTube, pix of food, people, silly cats and selfies…
Still, I wonder how many you’ll treasure in coming years. Could you find them 50 years later?
How about 80 years later?
I have been going through some pictures of my mum and dad and baby me, in immediate post-war Japan, 1946 to 1952. They’re 80 years old. Black and white and tiny. Yet still in perfect condition. Immediately accessible in a lovely, black-bound, black-paged photo album, 80 years old. With the photos labelled in white ink, steel nib, in my mothers’s young, very elegant calligraphy.
I cannot find a single photo from the ski trek I did across Greenland in 2006. Sled dogs and Inuit. Glaciers and ice cliffs. High skies and a vast Whiteland. Sleeping in tents on the sea ice. Eating seal, polar bear and musk-ox meat.
Photos? Many taken. Many beautiful. All Gone. Lost in the ether.
Makes you wonder, dunnit? About the downsides of plenitude and ease. Of “convenience”.
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| Our ancient Anglia (aka "Wrangle") on the Khyber Pass Afghanistan-Pakistan border, May 2025 |
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| At the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club |
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| Byron in the park next to our house in Discovery Bay Mountains in the back: the Tiger Head range |
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| Far left: ICC Centre, 108 floors. IFC Two Tower. The Peak |
