Foto Walk

As well as wanting to write here every day, I have also decided to resurrect my daily photo blog, which is now pretentiously called Foto. There is a new RSS feed for it as well, which you should add. Oh, and since I am housekeeping, would you mind spending two minutes acquiring a Gravatar? Once you set it up, it will work with all wordpress blogs and will, hopefully, become some kind of standard — as well as prettifying my comments section. Anyhow ….

Since coming to Glasgow three and a half years ago, my interest in photography has been rather erratic. I always felt let down by the light and the spindly tree branches that seem to get into every shot. Now, I am much more at ease with the light, my camera, and the fact that I can only take photos on weekends. I am determined to explore the city and, yesterday, went to Queen’s Park for a New Year’s Day constitutional walk.

As well as taking photos I decided that I would do a little experiment say hello or happy new year to everyone I met. At first, this was met with scepticism: I was wearing glasses, my trampy jacket, and hadn’t shaved.

Nevertheless, one man welcomed me with a pat on the shoulder. He reeked of booze but seemed friendly enough. I asked him if I could take a photo of him and he happily complied. I love it when real photographers get those great shots of vagrants and drunks, but have never dared to ask before. This chap was drunk from New Year’s Eve and seemed happy to have his photo taken.

At Queen’s Park, I discovered that the pond had frozen over, though not enough to skate. I did precariously walk across a little bit of ice as shown in this video (around 17 secs):

Later on, I nodded hello to a man walking his small child. He scowled at me: “I’m no fucking thingyme ya faggy bastard.” The idea that a friendly nod was an attempted seduction made me laugh, but he seemed genuinely riled. I can’t imagine that gays often proposition men walking toddlers, how jaded would you have to be to do that! But it did remind me why I rarely visit the South Side of Glasgow.

02 Jan 2009

Smugness

My first NYE without alcohol in seventeen years was very good, thanks. We stayed in, ate well, and nattered about the last twelve months and the next. Laura, fuelled by three potent Moscow Mules, was rather worse for wear by midnight, her conversation lurching up and down in volume and emotionality. It was interesting to observe and not as alienating as I thought it might be.

I am looking forward to the next month of sobriety. I feel like a scientist on the cusp of a ground breaking discovery. John Moore is also going dry for January. When he was asked what else he would have to live for he replied “smugness”.

This made me gasp. Was I smug? It’s true that I do like to congratulate myself when I have been especially good, but I like to think that I have enough self-awareness to recognize when people are rolling their eyes with disdain.

The trouble with smugness is that it makes all your virtue worthless. People think that if all you are going to do with your extra energy and your clearness of vision is to spout on about how good you feel then what is the point. I suspect that to be a really successful temperance campaigner, you have to forget about it.

What was I talking about again?

01 Jan 2009