“I was excited to berate you all for boring me with you pretentious tales of everyday drivel, like your insights were actually witty and amusing...they weren't.” Dear Sinister, I’ve often wanted to take photos whilst riding on buses, specifically whilst riding the number 97 bus from Birmingham City Centre back to where I live. In fact during the summer holidays last year, I contrived a whole art project of photographs taken along that bus route of the various interesting sights, but sadly, since I don’t own a camera, the project never came to fruition and I have had to content myself with another nice but fairly dull project of invented landscape drawings. I’ve been told, too, that if you take photos from inside a bus, the camera will focus on the pane of plexiglass in the window, rather than the intended target, which will appear in fuzzy soft focus at the back of the photo. How sad. Places of special interest along the route are many and varied; though I urge you to specifically look out for the interesting gates that litter the roadside as you travel past. That’s right, gates. My favourite gate that you pass is a wrought-iron gate that was painted blue many years ago probably only once, since much of the paint is now peeling off and rust has set in where the bare metal is exposed. The gate has also been bent and contorted slightly out of shape, it leers at you at slightly drunken angles. Being right on a main road it’s often stuffed with cans and crisp packets, coarse grass grows underneath it, but most interestingly of all, directly behind the gate is a wall. The wall is quite recent, you can tell that by the less worn conditions of the bricks and their cleaner colouring and this wall blocks wherever the gate originally led to rendering the gate itself quite useless. Whoever owns the factory there must have put up the wall, perhaps to stop people seeing in from the roadside, but they neglected to dispose of the gate. Perhaps this was for purely practical reasons, the gate is probable rusted onto it’s hinges and would be difficult and expensive to remove – you might have to bring in heavy machinery to do that, and on a main road such as this that just isn’t feasible. Or perhaps whoever decided the wall was to be built had a soft spot for this slightly wretched gate, saw some beauty in it and left it where it is, and decided to, perhaps, make a coy artistic statement by having this old gate lead straight into a wall. Because if you put that into a gallery, then it could be art, or ‘art’ if you prefer, recontextualise ‘gate with wall’ and there are a myriad of interpretations that suggest themselves – the old, defunct nature of the gate contrasting with the crisp newness of the wall, there is conflict there, in a metaphorical sense the gate could represent many things, and the wall is an obvious barrier. Other things along the 97 route do not reach such heady artistic heights, but there is sadness in the bit of sculpted architecture next to the snooker hall, now cracked and weathered, uncared for, and more sadness with the imposing and successful McDonalds, mocking the row of poor, failing shops that surround it. There used to be a patch of fenced-off litter strewn wasteground at the end of a bland alleyway which was oddly set off by a sign claiming: ‘This Site Sponsored by The European Union’ or words to that effect, with the circle of stars logo on it, but the sign has since been taken down, though the two metal poles which supported it are still standing. I always thought that was a poignant image, and I’m sorry I didn’t get a photo of that before it went. Even having travelled the route for years now hasn’t made it lose its appeal, though since I know the whole thing so well, travelling it is like listening to a song you know all the words and music to. But I think it takes familiarity with something like that, something that wouldn’t appear striking at all if only given a cursory glance, to find interest and even beauty in it. Which is more valuable, something beautiful that strikes you straight away, something that takes time to unveil itself, which might seem plain or even ugly at first, but little by little, becomes fascinating? What gives me the right to turn such everyday drivel into a pretentious tale? A few days ago I was on the 97 travelling back from town with my brother, and not far from the gate I was just talking about and he turned to me and said: “I hate this fucking bus ride.” Someone enthused about seeing Ikara Colt on tour, and having also seen them just over a week ago I can happily endorse his or her sentiments and recommend that you go and see them. Six pounds well spent I think. They’re the first band I’ve ever seen more than once too, and they were much better the second time around. Quite a good album as well. The show ‘Teachers’ is back on your televisions as I type this. To be honest, I only ever saw the first episode of the last series, but that was enough for me to think that it’s a cunning government funded plot to encourage more people to become teachers themselves – because hey, look how hip Simon is, he never does any work, he’s scruffy and cool, he has a nifty rapport with the kids, they respect him but they don’t fear him, look how attractive he and his colleagues are – I could be the same! Callous use of primetime TV to plug the gaps in failing employment figures. And our own Belle and Sebastian were oddly tacked onto the soundtrack, the noodly instrumental bit from ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ playing out the credits, which I felt, didn’t really sit well with the supposedly gritty and edgy content of the show. Or maybe it did, maybe the BBC reasoned that since the gritty looking exterior of ‘Teachers’ isn’t necessarily true, the show being facile and unrealistic they would counteract this with some Belles on the credits, since their music often appears chirpy and fun on the outside, but closer listening reveals a lyrical touch which often belies the niceties of the tune. Or, more realistically, Belle and Sebastian are a band ‘alternative’ enough to be cool, but safely tuneful enough to please the easily impressionable types who will be entertained and taken in by the show. - Kieran _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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