ENGLAND OCTOBER 2010
Reflections in Manchester
Since I was seventeen, I have been writing for money. In the seventies I wrote in my hometown paper. After 1982 I have worked fulltime as a freelance journalist. During the eighties and nineties I did a lot of travelling together with a photographer. Then the publishing world changed. The money for freelancers got worse and the newspapers and travel magazines I wrote offered so little that I have to stay home or start taking the pictures myself. You can see what choice I made.
One reason for travelling is the boredom at home starts pushing my away, or maybe I shouldn’t write boredom. I think it is better to write that you long for a break in the daily routines, not at least during the long and dark winter in this northern country.
So I fly to far away places (and not so far away places). Then I write and take pictures. Too many times I take the same sort of pictures that so many other photographers take. That started to change one winter day while I was walking with my camera in the harbour of my Danish hometown Hornbæk. I looked around and could not see anything I hadn’t taking pictures of before. Then I started to look in the water, small bits of ice were floating in the cold water, the sun come and as I looked I saw a picture I hadn’t seen before so I started to take the picture to my camera. The ice was changing positions and soon the pictures I saw and saved were gone, so I took new ones.
This could be a long story so well …let me write that I have continued to take pictures of reflections in water, mirrors, windows and a lot of other things that do reflect. I can say a lot of things about my mirror photos, but not now. For the moment I would like to write about three mirror photos I took in Manchester. The first is for a story on a project of storytelling I wrote about. It is called Rainy City Stories. The stories can be found on the net. Clouds on a map of Manchester represent stories from the city. The photo shows reflections of buildings on the map so that they sort of come together. In the background you see the reflections of the buildings on the opposite side of Deansgate.
Picture two I took at the platform in Manchester Piccadilly station. I was walking along the train when I saw the reflection in one of the trains windows. Except for parts of a poster I can’t tell what’s in the picture. To my eyes the different parts form an half abstract collage photo painting. The third picture is on the entrance to a big shopping centre. Outside was a Ferris wheel. You can see mirrors of the wheel and the staircase of people going down. I stood outside the window waiting for people with nice colours on their cloths coming in good positions.
I could write more, but the lust to do so has vanished after a long days writing and besides that, pictures are for looking. If you don’t like it – look at something else! I like, for a time, to look at my pictures and when I get tired of it I take new ones!
Fountains Abbey
Left, left, left I keep telling myself, in the beginning to no use at all. My right hand doesn't obey. In the way out of the airport roads it keep banging in the door. But pain is a good teacher and soon the left hand has learned to take care of the gear.
When left is learned I have to get used to the British roads and their lack of good design for signs. The problem is most significant when I enter Yorkshire dales. I don't turn in blind, so the result is I'm driving to long a lot of times. Time pressured it could be a problem, but most days I have the time I need to what little drive and long walks I want to. And the landscape that follows the small roads in Yorkshire is one of the best I can think of. The biggest difference from back home in Sweden is forest. Once I drove all the way from my hometown in the most southern part of Sweden all the way to Lappland, which is in the most northern part of Sweden. You think you could say that you have seen your country after a journey like that, but that's not the case. What I saw was threes, hundreds of kilometres after hundreds of kilometres. In Yorkshire there is a designer you have spread the threes in the landscape, and the houses and the hills and the dales and sheep. And afterwards he told people to walk. So wherever I walk I meet people. I can walk for hours without talking and I can walk for hours and stop a lot and have small talks about everything, but most of all of the joy of walking in a landscape made for walking.
One day I hate my wrongdrivings, it's because the afternoon is growing old and the light is fading. So I put up the f words, but in Swedish, because they are nicer I my native tongue: FAN, FAN, FAN. But then I make it. And it doesn't take long to see that Fountains Abbey is something quite special.
You could expect that the reason why it is a world heritage place is the sandstone buildings that make the most well preserved Closter in England. And it is not only well persevered but it is a building complex that is not only in harmony with itself but with the surrounding nature. Its place in the bottom of a narrow dale is perfect, and to make the picture complete the slops are covered with big oaks and between them cows are going around so we all can feel atmosphere of the place.
What make Fountains Abbey n a world site are the Water havens that made this Benedict monastery the richest in the 12th century. So I walk in the light of the disappearing afternoon.
Leeds
It rains, and thanks heaven for that. I've done too much walking. Now is the day for reading. I'm in Leeds. The hotel I stayed in for the first night was full for the second night, but I walked a few blocks down the road and got another one. So now I am sitting in another room, in another hotel in the same street. I saw Leeds yesterday, so I think I can read today. Leeds is nice, but books are better, I think and I write, I don't know if it is true. Well rainy days I think it is true.
Anyway I'm reading Andrew Biswells The Real Life of Anthony Burgess. It's a good book, only with one big problem. It makes me want to read more of Burgess. And I have too many books waiting for reading.
I have been reading and writing of censorship from time to time since Rushdie the Muslim priests treated to kill the author. In The Real Life of Anthony Burgess I learn that Burgess wrote about that, as he did write about many books, which were received as an offence to the accepted taste. His novel A Clockwork Orange of course was criticized for supporting violent behavior. In his answer he mentioned Hamlet of being supportive of killing stepfathers and the Bible of supporting violence in many ways.
Sex and violence and bad visions of God and other religious fantasy figures has always got people of good opinions to scream for banning of bad thoughts.
When living in Malta Burgess wrote that the list of books banned in the island was long. If the authorities used the same principle for all books the Bible should be banned. One reason mentioned by Burgess, I suppose it was fun for him to write, was the following:
“When I was a small boy, I saw another boy masturbating vigorously in front of a copy of the Holy Bible. It was one of those Victorian editions with the most lavish engravings. He was masturbating happily before an engraving of the dance Round the Golden Calf.”
I read the lines in the dining room at the hotel, waiting for my breakfast. The music that was playing was Gregorian chore music.
Earlier in The Real Life of Anthony Burgess Biswell writes about his experience of listening to classical music on radio in the early thirties. When they played Debussy Prélude à l'après midi d'un faune. He was hooked. Thanks to the I phone and my own collection in classic music I can make a break during the reading and listen to Debussy. I've always liked him, and other composers of similar sound like Grieg and Ravel.
Well, well, well - these lines should only be a short break during my reading. So an abrupt end - I guess I will be back soon.
Horton in Ribblesdale
Thought it should be more time for writing. Thought it should be no problems with the Internet connection. I was wrong. To me excuse, I hadn't been to Yorkshire dales before. No mountains there are over 1 000 meter, so I didn't thought … Anyway. I wrote and with a couple of days delay it's on the place where you can read it.
I've been to Lake District a couple of times before. After some time home your longing knows that you liked the place. The English landscapes and me are a love affair. Sounds silly to write that, because it's so moderate. Who the fuck wants to confess they love a landscape that is moderate. We should love vast deserts, high mountains, famous cities ad big oceans, but moderate landscape, ahhhh come on Tomas, you could do better than that. I say to myself.
But I am old ad experienced enough to neglect such thoughts.
To pick up another thing that can make me look even sillier - I went to Yorkshire dales because oft a picture. To be exact it is a picture of a stony road on the way to PE-y-Ghent just outside the little village Horton in Ribblesdale. You never know about a picture, it could be taken in a season that is extraordinary for the image of what the picture portrays, it could be taken on a day where the light was fantastic, and the process in Photoshop could have been intense. The pictures I loved to look at looked that it was taken a normal day by a normal skilled photographer. 
So I start walking not knowing how long it would take me to get there. The road was good. It was early morning. I walked alone, with the company of cows and sheep on the green hills as long as I could see, and the view was many kilometres long. The sun struggled, as it seems to do so many days in this country. As long as it didn't rain I would not complain. I could and should write more about the walk, but I am to tires just now. It's hard work to travel.
BEFORE THE TRAVEL
Goodbye Louisiana museum, Kronborg castle, North Harbour in Helsingborg, Dyrehaven parkwood, Copenhagen, hometown Hornbæk and welcome England.
For a change I try doing in English what I daily do in Swedish: write. The reason is obvious. Tomorrow I will land in England. I will get my rented car in Manchester and drive directly to Haworth in Yorkshire where I will spend the next couple of days.
To Swedish friends get exited about all my wrongdoings in the foreign English language. Be my guest. To readers more familiar in the language than I am – I do apologise for everything that is not correct, and I know it’s more than my imagination likes to think about.
I’ve been to England a lot of times before. First time when I was twenty and took the train from Paris. When I entered I got the question how I should manage my days in the country. I told the man who asked that I had a lot of money. He told me to show them. I did. It was 29 pound. I got permission to stay for ten days. After eight days I went down to Home Office, on Oxford Street I think it was, with a lot of money borrowed from Irish friends I had met during my first days in London. I got permission to stay three months.
As I wrote, I have been back a lot of times. Often I wonder why. I like to say that England is my favourite country outside Scandinavia, and maybe it is. If it is I can as well direct confess that there are a lot of things I don’t like in England. To put it more frankly – there are a lot of things I hate about England – the cameras – there are a lot of hem, and I don’t intend cameras, which we can push the button ourselves. I look at all the cameras tracing my movs in England.There are more surveillancecameras in England than in all other European countries together. To put it mildly – I don´t like it.
But tomorrow I will be in Haworth in Yorkshire and I don´t expect any cameras looking at me there. I expect meeting nice people and look forward to walking in example of the many beautiful English landscapes.