Hello All,
I’ve been a bit quiet of late. It’s been a great summer and as with all things it’s good to have a break…
I sat in Heathrow airport eating a sub-standard excuse for an English Breakfast with a knife that resembled a serrated tongue depressor more than is sharper relatives. The year so far had provided some cracking exploration and experiences that seemed far too distant and far too faded already.
Where was I going? Vancouver. The furthest I had ever been away from home. I had no plans for any UE and yet the whole experience would be an explore. It was a city I had never been to and knew very little about and it did not disappoint. It was an amazing but alien place and I found as the people I knew from that distant land had told me, that it is a city with an identity crisis. It is a meeting of cultures, some ancient and some more recent on the shores of English Bay and it has as a city, a massive homeless population, the type of person who becomes an expert at finding their way into forgotten spaces if only to keep warm through the Winter. In them balmy summer they flow into the parks and green spaces of Vancouver.
This was a holiday – a break of a few weeks between semesters and between explores where the plan was to walk away completely and reflect and yet as I found myself wondering the streets of this new city, I found myself wanting to know more about what lay underneath it. What great chambers lay below that few men had seen? The Winter Olympics had brought redevelopment and an extension to the Sky Train network. I rode it from the city to the end of the line and craved to be walking it on foot. The walls of the still new smelling stations were lined with images of the tunnels, lit but empty, waiting, not a single train having passed through these man made arteries.
I find that I am crap at taking the tourist photos. My brain sees nothing there and my camera stays at my side and yet the smallest details would click in my brain. A beat up camper-van or a homeless man sat in the park, a bike stacked with his possessions leaning against the bench behind him as he strokes a battered guitar makes me grab my camera and snap away in hope of capturing the moment.
As the days went on I relaxed into the holiday regime. Sleep late, drink lots and eat amazing food and it was good to step away from the constant itch to be somewhere I shouldn’t be – although this may have been due to the fact that I was reading Neverwhere and its tales of hidden spaces and places under London provided my fix. And I blame that knife on that morning where I sat sipping coffee that tasted burnt. It summed up the overly protected and monitored lives we live and the absurdity of the fact that whilst the provided knife with my meal was blunter than a spoon, I was served my drink in a glass and could walk across to the tax free shop and buy a letter opener…
And then two weeks had flown past – I sat on the long flight home and ate my bland in-flight meal and watched London get closer on the little screen. Then with a shake and a jerk I was back on home soil, sat on the train to Paddington and looking through the window streaked with rain, knowing that tucked just out of sight there were people, just like me crawling into the dark damp spaces, just to see what’s there and I knew that soon enough I would be back there with them.
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