Sinister: March 21st is the first official day of Spring

[Kieran Devaney]

“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



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