Once Upon A Time in West Norfolk

With thanks to Sergio Leone

https://youtu.be/lWOpyHbeA4M

(If the link doesn't work, just pretend you can hear a rusty wind turbine squeaking)

The wind blows northerly. The wind turbine is squeaking - painfully, rustily, squeaking as it turns.  I am in the far west of Norfolk, wearing a duster.  A fly bothers me.  Water drips on my hat.  I crack my knuckles. The wind pump squeaks as it turns, a plaintiff, scary sound, haunting me.  I think I am waiting for a train.....

But I am mistaken - it isn't a train station:

There hasn't been a train near here since Saturday, May 3rd, 1969. And, would you believe it, barely four months later, on August 31st, 1969, Sergio Leone's epic film Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) was released in the UK..... 

How's that for a coincidence?

I may just be dreaming.  It's the monotony, the drudgery, of an almost featureless 14 mile walk.

This morning I set off from home to explore the new King Charles III English Coast Path extension to the Norfolk Coast Path.  Officially, even now, the Norfolk Coast Path starts at Hunstanton and ends at Hopton-on-Sea on the east coast. But now sign posts lead you down from Hunstanton, past Heacham, past Shepherd's Port and the RSPB Reserve at Snettisham, and direct you to King's Lynn.  And that is what I wanted to do.  To get to King's Lynn.

The signs aren't good. Keep to the landward base of the flood bank says one. Guns unloaded until reaching shooting area says another. Is Jack Elam waiting for me?  Woody Strode?  Am I going to be surprised by the ice blue eyes of Henry Fonda as he walks out of the brush?  Please don't let me hear you call him Frank.....

Another sign says Private Shooting. Membership card to be carried at all times when carrying a gun.  I have neither card, nor gun.  My vulnerability screams. Will I be privately shot?

Another sign says Toilet 9 miles.  OMG!  What kind of hell is this?

I obey the signs. I keep to the landward side of the flood bank. I keep my eyes peeled for the livestock that apparently may be in the coast path corridor. I stumble over tussocks, my duster flapping in the wind. The train is two hours late, how will I ever get to Lynn?

Some kind of bird flies at me - but it's a lie.  It's just a cut out. What is this never-ending torment?

I dream of Claudia Cardinale.  It's the only thing that keeps me going. She's just arrived in Sweetwater.  She searches for her husband.  Am I the lucky one?

She looks past me - Am I not part of her dream?  (I know she's 86 now, but she's still gorgeous.)

And then her eyes brim with tears as she finds her new family lying shot down. Was it the King's Lynn and West Norfolk Wildfowlers?  For a moment I quake in my boots.....

And then I hear the squeaking of the wind turbine and I am at the station, harmonica round my neck.  With respect to Buster Keaton (Steamboat Willie Junior) [not to mention Federico Fellini - 8½] I step off the train on the wrong side......

My opponents are one horse shy, so I gun them down, even though I have no membership card.  Ha! So Frank sent you, did he? Squeak, squeak.....  A lone cow eyes me suspiciously.  What will I do next?

Well - if I had any rubbish, I might take it with me.  And if I had a dog......

But it's all a dream.  The wildfowlers are snug in their houseboats:

Or in their cabins (which used to be houseboats) even though there isn't a duck in sight:

They don't frighten me!  I'm on King Charles III's English Coast Path, and I've got the signs to prove it!  And I'm warning you, there's no toilets, cafes, or public transport options for 11¼ miles in that direction!

In fact there's nothing.  Just sweet nothing.  

For a coast path it's lacking something. The last time I saw the sea was at Snettisham RSPB, some ten or so miles behind me.

The only sign of life is a tractor harrowing up the reclaimed arable land, flocked by hungry gulls.....

Until I reach North Lynn farm, where a Welcome sign instructs me to stick to the footpath - OK! What else would you expect me to do?

Did you think I might swim in your ditch?

Or burn your corn?

No! I am now 13¼ miles from the nearest toilet, cafe or public transport, and my dreams have come to nothing. I don't even have the squeak of a wind pump to keep me company, so, please, let me out of this impossible world, this Escher mezzotint.....

And then, as the camera crane rises above the industrial activity before me, I reach the end of the trail, Ennio Morricone's score swirling around inside my head.

Though the wind turbine still squeaks:

Either

https://youtu.be/QML28YQBvyc?feature=shared

Or

https://youtu.be/QML28YQBvyc?si=XzOdEFPmBPO5ONtY

and if those links don't work just look up the opening sequence of 

Once upon a Time in the West online and enjoy.....

The Streets of London

 All the lonely people.....

So, what in the world's come over you?

And what in heaven's name have you done?

You've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness

You're out there running just to be on the run

I'm not alone. I'm with a small group of photographers, led by Simon Ellingworth, an international award-winning photographer and educator, who specialises, among other things, in street and black and white photography and available light portraiture. It's a day workshop in London, though I stray a little from the path.....

We start with a drink and a chat, introductions to each other, and some basic ideas on hunting, shooting and fishing - literally and metaphorically.  I fiddle with my camera to check the settings, and then we are off, a pack of photo-coyotes, eager for the kill.

I'm not alone - which is good - but I cannot deny a sense of loneliness, not necessarily in myself (though that's another story) but in many of the subjects I focus on. Some of these shots are candid - I hope no one is offended - but others are with consent. The trouble with consenting adults is that they then may pose and lose their spontaneity.....

Samuel Johnson coined the cliche that when one is tired of London one is tired of life, and William Wordsworth spouted that earth hath not anything to show more fair [than London from Westminster Bridge], but the thing about photography is that it is essentially a lonely and a probing craft. There is little point in "taking pictures" unless there is a point. Pointing and shooting won't kill the beast.

I find myself noticing elements of the loneliness of the city streets.  Above, a young man smokes and looks at his watch - is he expecting someone?  Here a woman sits alone, observed (discussed?) by three young men:

Here a young girl has a book for company - something of a rarity I think:

While just down the street, another girl has no book:

Andy Warhol's take on David Bowie reminds me that they are both dead, a thought that reminds me of life:

And life does go on, and on, and on, whether one is at work:

Or on a break:

On the move:

Or having a drink with a friend:

Or checking your phone while having a drink with a friend:

Or just checking your phone in case there is a friend out there:

Some people may be distracted from their phones for a moment:

While others aren't:

I wonder what Samuel J would say today?  When a man is tired of his phone, he's tired of life?  Or perhaps, When a man is tired of life, he rings someone....?

So, how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Let me take you by the hand

And lead you through the streets of London

Show you something to make you change your mind

I doubt I could change your mind.  Perhaps you're not lonely?  Making a phone call is not a certain indicator of isolation.  But what did we do before?  I used to queue to use phones in bars, and occasionally try via the operator to request a reverse charge call.  When I first ran a school boarding house in 1995, there was acute demand for the one payphone between fifty teenagers.....  And now......

But my images are not only of callers calling.  Simon has asked us to show him the world as he hasn't seen it before - not an easy task, and one that can lead to attempts at artifice, that ultimately lead nowhere. Framing is one gambit:

Blurring another:

Looking for colour swatches, or symmetry:

Picking out curious details:

Or trying to see the mundane in a fresh crop:

Looking for the abstract:

Or asking the Princess of Soho to strike a pose:

Or two:

Or even three:

There is a limit, for me, to how much I feel I can intrude on everyone else's world. I see individuals immersed in their own bubble, and I question what is it that makes me want to portray this?  Every day there are millions, if not billions, of pictures being recorded on smart phones and cameras across the globe, and what do we gain/learn from this?  

In a way I would like to think that somehow this will make us more aware of other people. More "tuned in" to the life of this world. But I am not sure. I love the Bar Italia in Frith Street, but more because I lived in Italy for twenty years, than because of its prices..... Photographing it makes me nostalgic for an Italy, or even a London, that has lost its way now, and quasi disappeared. So is my love of pictures a kind of nostalgia? After all, every picture you take is already in the past.....

Though to get a little bit Zen about it all, the essence of life is the infinitely expanded present, and here is a picture that works on at least one level in that way:  Michael Jackson is still with us, as is the young man with his bike waiting for instructions from another world, though time has moved on and they are already history.....

Back to the mono-polar essence of the smart phone. If nothing else, it makes you look wonderful between the pink and the blue of traditional values......

After the workshop I wander down the South Bank and keep my camera about me.  A woman in the Tate Modern Members' Bar asks me to take her photograph on her phone.  So I ask if I could take her on my camera.  What is this?  Should I have sat down and bought drinks and exchanged numbers?  Or was it just passing ships?  Is the infinitely expanded present all we can grasp?  I don't even know her name....

And then, silhouetted against the starkness of modern life a young man sounds a little Trenchtown, as people dance by, and I shoot him, as a hunter would.  Is that it?  Just another trophy?

Well, how can you ask about tomorrow

When we ain't got one word to say?

So, what in the world's come over you?

And what in heaven's name have you done?

You've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness

You're out there running just to be on the run

John Prine

Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

So, how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Ralph McTell

Streets of London

Thank you Simon