Pre-App [The Branches]

All Images: Clifton, Bristol & West Leicester, August 2024

When I was very young, my dad worked for the National Provincial Bank. Colloquially, in our family at least, this was known as ‘The NP’. I had heard people on TV and the radio talk (with a deference which was probably more common back then) about people called ‘MPs’', and being too young to really make sense of the adult world - conflated the two things. I assumed they were talking about what my father did. Ironically, a bit later, the National Provincial merged (or was swallowed up by – I’m not sure which) with the Westminster Bank. That became what we came to know as The National Westminster Bank, then just National Westminster, and which - following a common enough reductive path, we still recognise as Nat West. Big fish will always consume smaller fish, and Nat West itself was eventually absorbed into the Royal Bank of Scotland group (necessitating effective nationalisation for a while after the global financial crisis of 2008). My dad was regrettably long-gone by then, would probably have been bemused by much of it,  and certainly never had any political ambitions that I’m aware of.

In a very real way, I guess I am a product of that world of provincial, branch-based banking. My mother had also started her working life at the National Provincial, and my parents met at her workplace, in the busy fishing port that was her hometown. Her memories of that time included being regularly delegated to administer a satellite operation at the docks, handling large amounts of currency as cash deals were struck over freshly landed catches, and returning with boxes of complementary haddock to share amongst her co-workers. That particular trade is now massively diminished of course, and what remains was long industrialised beyond any such folk-memory. In the intervening years, the old docks became a fascinating, near-derelict zone of lost time, still vaguely ‘perfumed’ by the countless generations of North Sea fish that once passed through it. In some respects, the abandoned, boarded-up buildings that lingered there prefigured the ever-multiplying ranks of vacant bank premises, themselves now awaiting erasure or new occupancy on every high street.

Back in the day, career progression in domestic banking often involved relocating to a new branch with each new promotion. Consequently, we settled in a new (to us - it's actually pretty ancient) town when I was around 5 years old. However, my dad was lucky enough to take one or two more steps up without another move, and so that’s where I did all my real growing-up. Originally, his new branch was in a spectacular timber-framed building built in the mid-sixteenth century. I remember visiting his workplace and being very impressed by the crazy angles of heavy oak beams, and by the fact that the floor seemed to undulate beneath the feet as one crossed the room. I doubt there was a true right-angle in the whole edifice, and it’s possible the mundane world of local banking acquired an unwarranted historical glamour in my mind through being located there. 

The business later transferred to new, purpose-built premises nearby – occupying a bland Modernist insertion into a much older side street. I remember my father recounting the various teething-problems that arose as the new facilities bedded-in, not least the tendency for the alarm system to be triggered with the least provocation. As a key-holder, he was often the first to be called by the police if that occurred out of hours (as was generally the case), and I accompanied him on more than one of these exciting callouts. What seems really astounding now is that, rather than waiting in the car, I would go into the premises with my dad, another of his colleagues, and at least two coppers – all unable to know exactly who or what might be waiting inside. I even remember peering into the strongroom as the incredibly thick steel hatch was opened to ensure no one was hiding inside (much like something from a TV or film thriller). Of course, memory will inevitably romanticise the past, and perhaps everyone else knew it was just another inconvenient false alarm all along - despite having to observe the formalities. Nevertheless, it still seems incredible such things might have happened when the demands of Safeguarding and Health & Safety inescapably came to underpin every aspect of my own day-job.

Nowadays, as local bank branches rapidly disappear, we are naturally brought to the realisation that money was only ever really symbolic anyway. The gradual move away from physicality (bags of coins, the smell of rapidly thumbed notes, the iron clang of the night safe, etc.) began a long time ago but has accelerated exponentially as many aspects of our everyday lives migrate to the digital realm. Back in the 1970s, when ‘cash cards’ first appeared (long before they became the multi-functional debit cards many now increasingly find quaint), bank employees were amongst the first to trial their efficacy. I remember making a special family trip to the sole cashpoint machine in town, to try out my Dad’s new card. We watched as printed instructions spun round on a fabric belt (!), then waited in trepidation - hardly daring to believe the requested notes would actually be spat out. Nowadays - it seems, bricked-up or otherwise barricaded apertures are all that remains of many such terminals - even if some remain to indulge such folk as still value the reassurance of a few notes in the wallet.

As with my previous post, I should emphasise this really isn’t intended as an exercise in self-indulgent nostalgia or in bemoaning the inevitable (and generally mesmerising) processes of change. In fact, it’s always interesting to chart just how many technologies or trades may come and go within the span of one human life (a number that can only rise exponentially, I assume). As the app and the algorithm replace the cash desk and the card slot, I am mostly prompted to reflect on the ways that frictionless virtual narratives and information streams (and the transactions they enfold) are just as intrinsic to the life of the city as the physical features that constitute its fabric. That the clues to all this become ingrained within that very fabric is just a bonus for those, like me, who never tire of investigating our surroundings and seeking the signs.

Pre-Mobile [The Booths]

 

All Images: West Leicester & Clifton, Bristol, August 2024

I have always experienced a certain trepidation about using telephones. Like other kinds of social awkwardness, this was a distinct impediment in my youth, but something I have learned to manage far more effectively in adulthood. Nevertheless, even now, I will still sometimes avoid a phone conversation if there is a viable alternative, or unless a practical imperative pleasurable or pleasurable social interaction are indicated. 

I doubt I am the only one to have experienced such alienation. Our culture is full of references to troubling or confusing telephonic interactions (although they are certainly reported far less often anecdotally). A pretty extreme cinematic example is Joel Schumacher’s 2002 psychological thriller, ‘Phonebooth’ [1.], in which Colin Farrell’s lead character answers a random, unexpected call to a public phone - only to become pinned-down in the kiosk by an unseen sniper. For most of the film, it becomes the highly constricted arena in which he must make potentially life-changing/ending decisions and face-up to his own moral shortcomings. 

Idea for a possible survey:

Which form of phone-call would you least welcome - 

1. One in which a stranger imparts unexpected/disturbing information?
2. One in which no one speaks (possibly enhanced by static, breathing, etc.)?
3. One in in which a public phone begins to ring inexplicably and you are immediately posed the dilemma - to pick-up or ignore?

N.B: Any of these examples might constitute pivotal points in a narrative, or portals to alternative realities (looked-for or otherwise).

Some of my earliest memories involve entering a traditional, red GPO phone box with my mother, at the age of three or four. For somewhat anomalous reasons, the city we lived in also had cream-painted, privately-run boxes, but we were generally GPO customers. It’s possible there were calls to various people, but the ones I remember are those to my Grandmother, who lived on the opposite bank of the adjacent estuary (private line into our own home didn’t come until we ourselves relocated to the southern shore, a couple of years later). There are relatively few intervening miles involved, but in memory, the special journey to the kiosk, and the electronic distancing effect of the apparatus - with its associated infrastructure of cables and exchanges, gave the impression of contacting a foreign country. A trip to visit in person (pre-bridge) involved two train rides and a short paddle-steamer voyage, which only magnified that effect.

The Proustian potential of smell is well documented, and those old multi-windowed cast-iron booths had a particular aroma which remains vivid in the memory. Reason suggests it was essentially a blend of painted cast iron, residual cigarette smoke, and a hint of urine, perhaps - but even now I would simply identify it as that old telephone box smell. Almost as strong are the lasting impressions of filmed and scratched glass - distorting the street outside as I pressed my nose to each individual pane, or the heavily enamelled texture of the iron glazing bars beneath my fingers. Roughly level with the top of my head was a brushed-steel shelf (amazingly, now) - complete with an extensively-thumbed phonebook. My mother would lift me up there, with a coin or two pressed into my hand. Their insertion into the specified slot was a critically-timed procedure - performed exactly as she heard my Grandmother pick-up at the other end, but for me the real satisfaction lay in the sudden release and satisfying metallic clink as each coin dropped into the coin chamber. I might then leaf through the directory pages (futilely searching for some break in the dense and interminable list) as I waited for the handset to be handed over and my Grandmother’s strangely altered voice greeting me from the other side of the world.

Some years later, having left home, I moved between a succession of shared student houses. In very few cases were we prepared to split a phone bill (even if our irregular  comings and goings would have made it feasible). Once more, I found myself in public call boxes whenever it was necessary to make a call. If possible, I would often choose pen and paper instead. For a period, I became a prolific, and typically prolix letter-writer. 

On one occasion I visited the call box at the other end of our street, to make a fairly lengthy call. It was the end of the day, I was weary, and only when I got home did I realise I had foolishly left the kit bag I’d been carrying on the shelf where I once sat as a child (the accompanying directories being long-lost by then). Having only recently relocated to that address, I had stored all my personal documents in the same bag for safekeeping (passport, birth certificate, medical documents, etc., etc.) - but neglected to remove them before going out for the day. Its perceived value instantly multiplied way beyond the meagre cost of simply replacing a cheap canvas bag. It took no more than 5 minutes to run back to the phone booth, but in the interim the bag had been filched. Back then, restoring key official documents could involve an extended bureaucratic ordeal (involving a series of further phone-calls and letters, ironically). For several weeks, it felt like the monster had effectively swallowed my life.

Of course, technological ‘progress’ has long-since rendered the boxes all-but obsolete. Whilst I may be an habitual late-adopter, I’m not a total Luddite, and so I too carry a mobile device - just like (nearly) everyone else. If I’m honest, the range of typed/deferred  alternatives to spoken calls, and obvious flexibility it offers, actually suit me fine. However, any vestigial anxiety about phone calls is now replaced with the periodic stress of negotiating a new deal, and  the life-sapping chores of managing emails, social-media posts, updates etc. Communication over distance never really gets simpler, it seems. It may have become less of a deliberate or pre-planned operation, but the potential filters between us still morph and multiply, nonetheless.

The old cast-iron kiosks slowly retreated into that quaint dimension of British ‘heritage’ that  also encompasses Morris Minors (my family also drove those), welcoming pubs, and properly-funded public services. Most were gradually replaced by a more minimalist, glass-sided variant, adorned by an ever-changing succession of privatised company logos. Somehow, those always felt pretty shonky, despite their somewhat belated nod to functional Modernism. Sleek aesthetics and an ever-contracting societal regard for shared facilities are rarely a great fit, and so it became increasingly rare to find one in a pristine, un-vandalised or otherwise unadorned state. Their bland, flat sides proved impossible for corporate interests to overlook as potential advertising space, and fly-posters-by-night and graffiti enthusiasts clearly felt the same way.

Luckily, all that patina, entropy, entangled messaging, and creeping neglect remain visual meat and drink for my own lens (for the time being, at least). Indeed, even complete absence itself can often supply viable subject-matter, I find. Certainly, the pit-falls of nostalgia are far more usefully swapped-out for an appreciation of the inevitable processes of urban/social change. Either way, the ever-accelerating decline of/demand for the booths, and apparent reluctance of BT to maintain those that do linger, suggest they will probably become just another ghost of the Everyday before long - perhaps revealed in the form of a occasional wrecked carcass, or vacant concrete pad.

[1.]:  Joel Shumacher (Dir.), 'Phone Booth', Fox 2000 Pictures & Zucker/Netter Productions, 2002

Be In Bristol

Whiteladies Road, Bristol, August 2024

I’ve just returned from another of my regular short trips to Bristol. Over the last couple of years these have been largely dedicated to collecting material for what has slowly coalesced into my ever-expanding ‘The Basin’ project. That ‘ever-expanding’ quality explains why progress has been slower than originally envisaged (as is so often the case when I dig myself into something). Fortunately, ‘steady’ is also an applicable adjective, and the project continues to feel both relevant and rewarding.

However, it’s definitely time to stop ceaselessly collecting visual raw material, and imperative that the project should now solidify into a more tangible statement. A number of posts on here have featured first drafts of the written ‘chapters’ around which the project is to be structured, and pleasingly, I’m now starting to see some distant glimmers of light at the end of that particular tunnel. Consequently, this most recent trip featured relatively little photographic action around the Cumberland Basin site itself, and rather more general daytime drifting around a wider sweep of Bristol territory, with a few writing hours put in on the laptop once back in the hotel room.

As is inevitably the case, (indeed - the whole point really) drifting leads to observation, reflection and unpredicted leaps of imagination. Here then, are a series of random musings, separate from ‘The Basin’, and connected only by the serendipitously found text appearing in these images:

• Reflection: To simply ‘Be in Bristol’  involves a three-hour motorway drive each way, plus the price of a mid-range hotel room and sundry refreshments. The cost implications of making the state more permanent are intimidating. As one walks away from the estate agent’s window, the undeniable attractions of these streets exerts itself all over again. The old cost-value/quantity-quality dilemmas crash in. 

• Irony: When I was here, in a previous life, education was supported and my income dependant on hand-outs. Housing support covered the rent on a cheap room, at a shabby address, in a charming quarter. It was another century.

• Memory: The landlord carried a replacement refrigerator on his back, up three flights of stairs.

• Cartographical Reflection: Slight diversions reveal the fractal details of the street plan. Hidden lanes, tiny cottages, the obscure climb up to the World’s End.

• Irony: Such newly-uncovered places lie within the shadow of previous homes. It has required intervening decades and a conscious recherché to unfold them from the map.

• Reflection: The economy of this place appears to function through refreshments, relaxation, and the deferment of mortality. Every neighbourhood offers a choice of coffee, tapas, running gear, and beauty fixes. Nail maintenance and the Pilates Zone are readily accessible. Those not drawn in there appear to be renovating heritage properties at a leisurely pace. The suspicion is that far more lucrative flows must operate through subterranean channels.

• Observation: A middle-aged woman on the table adjacent. Exhaustive/ing account (in clipped tones) of her daughter’s recruitment to a rapidly-expanding digital start-up (the interview process, starting salary, share options, possible relocation to New York). In production of what? She’s clearly what they were looking for but the drive to an out-of-town HQ may prove tedious.

• Observation: A man in his dynamic years, with suit jacket over one arm. The other extends a phone to his ear. Street food, cocktails and coffee are imbibed around him in early evening sunlight. Indifference to the detritus building at his feet. Negotiations last longer than the ordering and consumption of several meals.

• Physical Accomodation: At a certain age, the knees of the flaneur require endless perambulation to give way to the cafe table with street view. Close the paperback and laptop for the second coffee. Simply Allow the city to come to you through an open window.

• Observation: The two nearest tables are dedicated to accounts of recent trips and the planning of the next (the perfect Air B&B, the secret restaurant, etc.) On the third, a man in late middle-age scrolls through his screen and quietly dictates the salient points into his phone. The subject is inaudible despite the proximity. His murmur layers into the ambience.

• Observation: At 11.00 am, the vast majority of tables (at all venues) are occupied by ranks of the active elderly (see above). Loose sleeves, khaki shorts and sun hats predominate. The proximity of the first cataract operation make sunglasses obligatory. They settle-in and business booms. Early-release funds and property portfolios have been generous.

• Danger! Irregular Terrain: In this city one always looks up or down. Perspectives become contingent upon elevation. Cliffs and abutments of pastel facades stack overhead. Roofs cascade down the hillside below. The intended goal lies beyond the fugitive crest of any given street. Progress comprises a series of stumbles, jars and barely-internalised curses, amongst arbitrary cobbles and irregular steps. Certain slabs appear to function as trapdoors. One might regain lost fitness or equally succumb to injury here.

• Observation: Pause for expensive beer at an unsteady pavement table. Two legs stand on an irregular iron cellar hatch. Each passing pedestrian footfall creates a seismic event - clattering my glass loudly.

• Observation: A paint spattered decorator emerges onto the pavement, agreeing by phone to terminate his leisurely pub lunch. He crosses to the most bourgeois hardware shop imaginable (situated opposite between Japanese food and smart coffee). 90 seconds pass. He emerges, clutching a single one and a half-inch glossing brush. The artisans handle themselves somewhat differently in this neighbourhood. 

• Reflection: Glimpsed between facades, or at the point where an elevated street curves away, certain distant windows suddenly catch the eye. Teetering attics are stacked amongst precarious roof-scapes. How does the city appear from that vantage? Could one be in that room? 

Acknowledgement:

The influence of Georges Perec on this post cannot be overlooked - both as a master observer of the everyday, and a noted conoisseur of urban spaces. Between composing these fragments, I consumed numerous chapters of:

Georges Perec, 'Species of Spaces and Other Pieces' (Ed/Trans. John Sturrock), London, Penguin, 1974/1997.

'The Basin': Art Trail 2 - 'Action Painting' [Draft 1.0]

All Images: Floating Harbour, Bristol,  February 2023

‘Action Painting’:

For a time, formal muscularity gives way to “an arena in which to act”. The iron-clad underflank has become a designated target for spontaneous ejections, as the bridging function embraces a new entanglement. Decor and physics combine in a fluid exchange, although, in the present case, the surface tension effects are small. The moment has been elongated at a flick, with each line of flight logged prior to accretion. [Note that the formation, motion, and stability of fluid filaments have been vastly studied because of their prominence in a wide range of flow phenomena]. Several regimes are observed: viscous, gravitational, inertio-gravitational, and inertial, and liquid transfer across the board remains the key to this environment.

The historical significance cannot be overestimated, with traditional parameters dissolving into a field of uncertainty. The roots for this style of painting lie at the dawn of Modernism - since when, many artists have used formlessness as a tool for creativity, not to elevate art, but to get it down and dirty. To one notorious thinker, “l’inform” was about destroying categories and knocking art off its metaphorical pedestal. An understanding of the physical conditions at which these patterns were created is important to further art research, and it can be used as a tool in the authentication of paintings. 

A ritual intoxication has leaned back onto a vertical plane now [swivelling on demand towards the most advantageous aspect]. Therefore, it is relevant to compare the surface tension effects with gravitational stretching. At greater elevations, seabirds conduct experiments of their own.