Catherine O'Flynn's Blog, page 3
March 25, 2009
Footfall
The Women’s Hospital has allowed a market trader to set up on its premises. As you walk through reception and into the first part of the hospital there is a man with a big table covered in bottles of knock off perfume. Visitors and dressing gown clad patients mill around spraying scent at their wrists. It’s an endearingly amateurish first step to what I assume is the final destination of a fully integrated healthcare/retail environment. The new hospital is being built over the road – possibly the biggest building I’ve seen in my life. There’s something terrifying about the scale. I assume now that part of its vast footage will be set aside for designated retail space. Not just the usual little newsagent run by the Friends of the Hospital, but the full panoply of High Street concessions – Accessorize, Thorntons, Dixons etc. The logic seems undeniable. Someone, somewhere has realised that enforced waiting is the greatest facilitative environment for unfettered spending. If shopping as a leisure pursuit in general is seen as an attempt to fill some ill-defined gap, then perhaps the desire to shop grows the greater the misery.
By limiting themselves to shopping centres and high streets, retailers are missing out on a significant part of the population who are trapped in a community limbo somewhere or other – the most bored, the most dissatisfied and listless, the most open to the appeal of spending money and acquiring things. Old peoples homes, doctors waiting rooms, prisons – these are surely great missed opportunities.
July 30, 2008
Summer of Love
Some notes on Latitude 2008.
Standing outside the back of the Uncut tent. It’s too crowded to go inside. On stage are ‘Black Kids’. I stand behind the opening for the sound desk – lots of other people stand around me. None of us can see very well. It’s almost completely pointless standing there – we are experiencing the group live in the smallest possible way. In front of me is a black, rubber covered ramp leading up to the sound desk. Behind the desk are various people – technicians I guess and other people connected with the band. Lying on the dirty ramp is a baby – maybe 18 months old – I don’t know, not old enough to walk. She is sprawled on the ramp, shuffling slowly on her belly up and down. She’s filthy. She looks very vulnerable amongst all the feet crowding around. Occasionally a stringy woman with dreadlocks comes out and checks that she’s still there and, I guess, that she hasn’t been trampled on. I have bad thoughts about this woman. I can’t concentrate on the band, I find myself getting more distracted by the baby and the woman. The woman may well have nothing to do with the baby. I don’t know. I’m not really getting much from the gig, I walk away.
On another occasion I’m watching another band, I can’t remember who, inside the tent – but still at the back. There is a tall man nearby who appears to be drunk. He shouted something when the band first came on and lurched forwards. Now he addresses comments directly into the ear of whoever happens to be near him. Some move away, some smile and nod. One woman enters into conversation with him, perhaps not realising how drunk he is. The music is loud and so he has to shout right into her ear. I can see bits of spit flying from his mouth and landing on her ear. She instinctively leans her head to one side, away from his mouth and he moves with her, keeping the distance between his lips and her ear at just a couple of centimetres. She is stuck now with her head at a painful angle and this man shouting into her ear. I don’t notice what the band are doing. I can’t watch anything but this man. I leave the tent.
July 9, 2008
Waiting for my man
I seem to have lost the ability to cross the road. Historically I was one of the great road crossers: adventurous, brave and with split-second timing I would run out in front of oncoming traffic, always just making the far curb. The horns might blow, motorists might hurl abuse from their windows, but I would be on my way. Now I am a sorry shadow of my former self – cursed with extreme timidity, unable to take that decisive first step.
I blame travel for this. Earlier in the year I visited the US, Canada and Australia in quick succession. I knew that in one of those places, motorists drive on the left, but I was never able to recall if it was Canada or Australia (it was obviously somewhere that still had the Queen knocking about in some capacity). This combined with the presence of trams in some of the cities I visited created some kind of heightened disorientation when crossing the road. I became entirely dependent on the green man – a figure I had previously always disdained. I spent a long time waiting for him. I waited for him in Toronto during a snowstorm. I waited for him in New York while the north wind blew grit in my face. I waited for him in Sydney where the sun burnt me through grey clouds, and I waited for him in Melbourne whilst I tried to avoid being hit by a tram.
On returning to England, I regained my former devil may care attitude and was once more striding purposefully into the carriageway, but then I went to Amsterdam, where as well as traffic coming the wrong way, as well as trams gliding silently around corners, there are of course thousands of cyclists just waiting for an opportunity to use their bell. I gave them plenty.
Since then I’ve been a broken pedestrian. One of those pathetic creatures who presses the button for the green man even when there isn’t a car on the horizon. I am dependent on him even in my own country and this pains me greatly because he is essentially a deeply unendearing character. He takes his time and when he finally does arrive it’s with a self-aggrandising fanfare of bleeps or clicks. I sense the smugness in his glow. He looks on me as a sinner returned to the fold. I despise his sickly green embrace.
