So, in the wee hours of this morning and in the midst of my preparation for bed
I trotted downstairs for a glass of water.
Okay, so you've caught me already. Less trotted, more slumped. Happy now? Anyway,
it was roughly that point that I made the fatal mistake of looking in the fridge
and realising we were out of milk. Bollocks. There were a couple of other odds and
sods that the cupboard was bare of to my sure and certain knowledge, but milk was
the killer, the deal-breaker, the thing that put me over the edge from "it'll
wait 'till the next time I'm down the shops" to "I'll get me coat".
Anyway, I stepped outside into the freezing night, and realised that there was barely
a sliver of moon showing over the rooftops, not a cloud in the ink-black sky. Basically,
exactly the sort of night I've been waiting for to have a pop at photographing star-trails.
Bollocks.
Back into the house, then, grab my camera bag, my torch,
my iRiver and a warmer coat, and once more unto the breach dear friends, once more.
I zipped around Tesco in double-quick time, almost forgot the milk which was, y'know,
largely the point of the exercise, stashed the bags in the boot and headed for Cassiobury
Park, my usual haunt for these ill-advised endeavours. I parked up, pulled on the
gloves that I'd had the foresight to invest three quid in twenty minutes ago and
headed on in.
Now, when I was in the park after dark last
week (because I do make
a habit of this sort of stupidity) between the full moon and the frost on the
ground, there was enough light that I barely needed my torch. There was enough light
for me to actually cast a bloody shadow at five a.m.
That wasn't quite the case this morning.
This morning was dark. Black, if you'll indulge me, as a chimney-sweep's ear 'ole.
And cold, but that was less of an issue. Let's get back to dark. The spot I was
headed for to take my pictures was the children's playground in the middle of the
park, maybe a quarter of a mile from the entrance, since I wanted to be far enough
from the road that I wouldn't have too much of the street lighting bleeding into
my shot, and figured that the play area would give me some interesting shapes for
the foreground. The main drawback of this spot was, well, it was a quarter-mile
from the entrance.
I've always had a thing about being in wooded places at night. And not a good thing.
They give me, not to put too fine a point on it, the screaming ab-dabs. A combination
of overactive imagination and an inherent mistrust of nature combine to freak me
the fuck out whenever I stray too far from the comforting sodium glow of the streets
we know. My nervousness doesn't usually take on concrete form - there's not generally
a specific thing I'm frightened of, it's just a generic, all-encompassing anxiety
about anything and everything.
Given this, you might think it wasn't a great idea for me to make a conscious decision
to go wandering around a park a couple of hours before dawn. Coincidentally, very
similar thoughts were going through my head about two minutes after I'd left the
car. But I wasn't going to come all this way and leave without at least having a
stab at getting the picture I wanted, so I pushed on regardless doing my best not
to think too much. On at least one level, this actually wasn't too difficult, since
I can't remember ever having seen the sky so full of stars, giving me several moments
of "whoa!" and several more moments of trying to pick out the few constellations
that I know ("Okay, there's Orion, there's the Plough, uh... there's the Teenager's
Face In Need Of Biactol, there's the Exploding Fountain Pen, oh, right, that's the
Dot To Dot Book, um... oh, look, the Bunch Of Stars. And that over there is the
Bunch Of Other Stars, and the Third Bunch Of Stars That's Pretty Much Indistinguishable
From The First Two Bunches Of Stars..."), at least enough to get me to the
play area without a serious panic attack. Several minutes of messing about getting
everything set up later, and it was just a case of sitting for fifteen minutes while
the camera did its thing.
I've had more frightening times in my life. But not many.
See, it's about this point that parts of my brain, agreeably silent up to now, start
to make themselves heard re: exactly how far from anyone else I am and how much
trouble I'd be in if, for example, a wild-eyed tramp came bounding out of the woods
and stabbed me in the small of the back. And now I'm stuck in a dilemma - do I put
on my headphones and try to give my brain something to occupy it other than thoughts
of being shivved by a nutter or worse? On the other hand, if I've got my music on
I won't hear the attack coming in time to do anything about it. But on the other
other hand, if I let myself hear every background noise, then every single one is
going to become a phantom hobo with a rusty screwdriver or some twisted bastard
spirit of the forest's righteous vengeance on Humanity.
Gah.
It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time it was disturbingly real. I've never,
ever felt so exposed and vulnerable in my entire life. Fifteen minutes of constant
watch-checkery, desperately trying not to look at the shadows of the treeline or
hear the debris being thrown behind me by the breeze, my stomach turning over and
over, my heartbeat pounding fast enough to near-close my throat, sweat forming even
against the frigid wind. I got my picture, I packed up as quickly as I humanly could
and I hurried back across the field pursued and panicked by every faint sound made
by my bag as kit shifted inside it, or loose straps bumped and scraped. I bundled
back into the car and locked the door behind me, my breathing coming in gasps that
didn't fully subside until I was five minutes away on a main street.
Why am I choosing to share this experience? Don't know, really. I've got a vague
notion that it says something about our instinctive fear of the primal, about the
ways in which our lizard-brain finds itself in conflict with our evolved, rational,
conscious mind. But I've also got a nasty suspicion that it says more about me personally
than it does about humanity as an entity in which case - hah. You know. Online Journal
In "Self-Indulgent Post" Shock. Don't worry. We'll be back to funny meanderings
about shit movies, shittier adverts and U-fucking-2 in no time.
Has anyone else seen the new advert with Kim Wilde proudly declaring to the world
that her family always shops at that beloved haven of all preternaturally regular,
pill-popping pasty-pale chop-dodgers, Holland
And Barrett?
Then again, the fact that jug-eared Sultan Of Smug and former England captain Gary
Lineker took time from his busy schedule to educate us regarding the
dangers that paedophiles pose to innocent photographs doesn't seem to have especially
impacted his desirability
as a corporate shill, either. So I suppose I don't really have a point here.
Other than the usual, general, Fuck-Me-Sideways-With-A-Battery-Operated-Tool-Not-Conventionally-Designed-For-That-Task-How-Stupid-ARE-We?
one.
