B.E.I.C
I’ve been thinking for a long while now how I’ve managed to ‘escape’ England for almost half a century.
For in 1975, as we left the damp and depressed Lancashire, for the vibrant sunny climes of Africa, and as we sat in our Boeing 707, climbing up and out of the drizzle from Heathrow on that cold January morning, it really did feel to me like an an escape. My sense of excitement and relief to see England disappearing into the grey clouds as we climbed up up and away was palpable.
Now some 45 years later, I’ve been reflecting on the realization that I’ve lived in the footprint of what was the great colonial trading conglomerate British East India Company. B.E.I.C. With homes and ‘chapters’ that include London, Cape Town, Penang Malaysia and Hong Kong.
I find that quite compelling, and I’ve been considering how I might be able to use that coincidence to inform my photographic oeuvre going forward. By joining dots between these distinct and varied chapters in my life.
The sticking point about the B.E.I.C idea was that I wasn’t convinced I had enough interest in the history of maritime trade or ramifications of Colonialism to make it work for me. But then just this morning a better idea came to mind. The subject of ESCAPISM.
Partly informed by the fact I’ve been posting photos, screen grabs off google street, of roads, lanes or avenues that carry names suggesting of sunnier, warmer and ultimately more exotic climes. Hot Lane, Paradise Rd, Lagoon drive for example, names loaded with irony given their promise of something way less ordinary than the bleak, forlorn places they actually label. This series I might call ‘Sunshine State of the Depressed Mind’. Does not a rosy title for a grunge hole smack of ‘escapist’ sentiment??
Yes I have to admit I have a melancholic nature. It comes in the family. England did and still does to a large degree, ‘depress me’. Even on a sunny day. Something about the ‘smallness of the place’. The rows of prefab wimpey homes or industrial revolution era back to back terraces of grey, red brick. While the cobbled streets have largely gone, and the soot stained walls sandblasted clean, large swathes, certainly of the north of England, to me, remain forlorn, moribund and in some ways threatening places. And then in the rosy ‘South’ those pretty thatched villages in the cotswolds seem merely trite and twee.
Certainly my memories of Northern England of the early 70’s are of the preponderance of glum, scruffy looking people, prone to yobbish and violent behavior. I got thrown in a canal in the middle of winter while fishing by three yobs who ended up in my secondary school later that year. A school that was in essence one notch removed from borstal. Binge drinking was and still is a national sport. I have no stomach for the British fixation with football, replete with legions of lager louts and hooligans. Neither for Tabloid newspapers, Telly watching, stodgy food, and let’s not forget the weather. Rain as default!
Of course England is what one makes of it. As the saying goes, ‘when one is tired of London, one is tired of life’.
So, while the covid pandemic curtails my economic possibilities it’s also forcing me to think that for the first time since my ‘great escape’ I may have no choice but to return to England.
Borders around the world are tightening curtailing my foot loose and fancy free lifestyle. Immigration becoming way more strict. More questions asked. It’s way harder to ‘duck and dive’. One of my favourite escapist pastimes. Am I been ‘forced back to England?’ I ask myself?
Yes England besides South Africa might be my only two options. And I would choose England because by going ‘home’, I can in fact use it as premise to ‘escape’ again!
You see I’ve decided that I can use the acronym for the British East India Company, B.E.I.C as such. The Britain Escape Indefinitely Concept. Rather tongue in cheek. But a working title nevertheless.
One that certainly opens up for me an entire plethora of ideas and concepts. Both for and against that little damp island which ultimately is ‘home’.
I think about how many mariners over the centuries chose to mutineer and chance walking the plank or hanging from the jib, rather than face the prospect of going back to England. A fate some of them saw as worse than death 🙂
