items.feast.mental
Section 24 and it is a cooler day at about 2pm. The sky is a mixture of blue with white and grey clouds. Showers are due I feel. It is quiet again with a few people on benches, there is a couple having a picnic but they go soon after I arrive and then another couple just lying on the mown grass looking at their phones together. Dave the musician walks by without his dog but with another guy and points out to me that they are holding hands, I’m not sure why and I can’t quite make out if it is a new relationship or not, whatever, they looked happy. There were three girls on a bench next to my section. I told them what I was doing and to just ignore me. I like the fact that whenever I explain to anyone about this project, they generally just find it interesting and let me get on with it, take their photo or whatever.
Struggling to know what to say today, I feel everything is changing again. When I started this project all the numbers for COVID were very low, but now, in this region they are getting very high and I am anticipating the call from the school saying we need to isolate for ten days. So I may have to break my project for a while. I love doing this and exploring this park and the people, so don’t fancy a ten day break but we will see what happens. However for today it has affected my thoughts. Watching a park that was coming out of lockdown but you wonder what the cost of lifting these restrictions is as more and more of the young adults in this park and children are allowed to be getting infected with a virus that no one really knows whether it will cause them long term problems or not. This project was part of the pandemic and there may be more to come.
Today I saw: 2 benches, 1 bin, 1 lamppost, grass, path, clover, daisies, bush, 1 pair of headphones, apps 55 pieces of rubbish, 100s of cigarette ends.
Someone said to me that I was obsessed by rubbish and I thought about that. The truth is my daughter gets really upset by the rubbish in the park so I wanted to record it and once you photograph one bit you need to photograph it all. I can’t decide that this is rubbish but the cigarette ends aren’t, I have to photograph it all, sorry!
BTW I saw 1 dog and one dog walker in my section with another 2 dogs and walkers elsewhere.
Parklife 