The photo not taken

Not taken because I didn’t have my camera with me -- three or four people sat at a table in the sunshine outside a fish and chip shop. A life-size model of a grey heron stood on an adjoining table to which it was padlocked. The fish shop owner was outside and joking with his customers; everyone was laughing. I know them by sight; two of them are people ‘in the community’ who, in another age, might have been in residential care. To be honest, I would have loved to have photographed the scene, but there would have been something Diane Arbus (known for her photos of ‘marginal people’) about it. You see I wasn’t only drawn to the peculiarity of the heron and the rotund fish fryer but the eccentric appearance of the care-in-the community couple. By taking a photo I would have intruded on their afternoon’s conviviality. And there would have been something exploitative about it. I will, though, remember that photo not taken for quite some time.

Dodgy broilers

Steaming hot day and Rye Lane is packed with shoppers and dawdlers. I’m one of them. I spot the sign in one of the many butchers where broiler chickens hang by their feet, ready for the pot. As I took the photo, three guys behind the one in the foreground turned away, not wanting to be captured.

Super!

It’s an odd juxtaposition: death and the superlative, SUPER. But, hey, life (and death) is about oddities. I could explain that on either side of this newly-occupied grave were the words MUM and GRAN, but that rather spoils things. I prefer to think someone thought, death… SUPER. Maybe it is.

Sad demise of 'chicken addict'

I’m making a Blurb book (an internet design program for photo books) of snaps I’ve taken in and around Peckham, most of them dating back to the early part of this glorious century. Not all my photos and words can fit into what will be a small book; some will find their way into the Blog. Here’s one.

This headline stopped me in my tracks: 'CHICKEN ADDICT’S SUICIDE'. What is it like to be addicted to chicken, I wondered? Doomed to a constant ingestion of KFC? Incredible chicken cravings that can erupt at any time? Never feeling like you can eat enough of the damn bird? Does the addict's day start with a giant bucket of fried chicken wings? Can you get high on chicken? Does addiction lead to dreaming about chickens; inhaling, like a junkie with his crack, chicken aroma; wishing there was a device to mainline it, spending every penny and conscious moment chasing the chicken dragon? 

When I bought the paper I discovered I was on the wrong track. The 'addiction' was to live chickens. The man kept 73 of them in a flat he shared with another man. But, when a new batch of eggs arrived for hatching, the flatmate objected, and threatened to move out. At the inquest, the flatmate explained that the dead man 'had an addiction to chickens… He had 73 when he passed away -- I said this and the 20-plus rabbits was a problem -- insanitary.' This led to a row, which, apparently, triggered the suicide. The Southwark Coroner said the man's death was a loss to medicine. He had been a surgeon, originally from Iraq.