When my eldest daughter was a wee girl, I remember buying her a gingerbread man. We stopped to eat it in the old Sheffield Peace Gardens, sitting next to a large brass church-bell presented to the city by Sheffields twin town of Bochum in Germany. As she ate her gingerbread, from time to time, people would stop to look at the bell we were sat next to. After a while, my young daughter said to me, Daddy, I dont like those people looking at my gingerbread man!
An amusing story, I hope, but the same behaviour is less charming in an adult, and unfortunately, here at least, perhaps thanks to a TV diet saturated with reality TV shows, delusional ego-mania seems to be rampant among large sections of the adult population. Pull out a camera, and every other fat-head who walks into your shot, thinks you must be taking a photo of them - because theyre obviously far more important than the Grade 1 listed building they happen to be walking past
While some of these people are happy to share the most intimate details of their private lives with anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot, courtesy of their hands-free mobile phones, and who spend much of their waking lives taking selfies of themselves and posting them to social media, the mere possibility that someone might have captured their image, without them adopting a suitable pose, can make them quite irate. While in Sheffield recently, and photographing some historic architecture, a guy who had driven onto one of my shots actually pulled his Jag over to demand why I had taken a photograph of him!
So it was today when I decided I needed a break from work, and went into town to have some breakfast OK, second breakfast - and buy a few provisions for the weekend. The attitude of Kylie and Tyson Public aside, add a knife (read KNIFE!!!) into the equation, and you could be courting disaster!
I thought Id show Earl round Leeds Market - while it still exists - but the rancourous looks my diminutive camera received caused me to fear for Earls safety, as well as my own! I dont know if it was due to the over-abundance of flabby lobster-pink flesh on show, or if they thought I was doing surveillance work for the Department of Social Security! Such was my haste and furtiveness that half my shots were out of focus. Fortunately the grimacing idiots didnt see Earl show them his backside!
I adjourned for coffee and something to eat at a favourite Italian cafe, ordering the very un-Italian dish of beans on toast. Folk here tend to think of baked beans as being very American, but in fact Britain consumes more of them much more of them than anywhere else in the world. Heinz alone sell one and a half million cans every day in the UK!
I dont know who consumes all those beans, but for my part, I had about half a tin on some lightly toasted focaccia bread. Earl seemed to approve, I guess weve both got a little cowboy in us!
