Category: Photos

Dubai International airport again. Sigh.

With all his tools, as well

From what I would call the muti market, in Guangzhou. The market where the stalls sell all sorts of things that could be food, could be medicine, could be magic. Could be anything at all

These are incredible, crispy pancakes filled with veggie things and this tangy, spicy sauce. He makes them in front of you, from his little stand at the campus gates, and they cost all of 3RMB, about 25p. Yum

At the Victoria and Albert museum.

This is a wall of mediaeval carved faces in the V & A, all gazing at the opposite wall.

I have always been fascinated by this glass object that hangs in the main atrium of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I don’t know much about it, but it is so weird and compelling that I can’t resist. It wasn’t this dark – I was tryig to catch the flare of light around the sides of it.

This is a picture of a picture by David Goldblatt of Strijdom Square in Pretoria, now known as something else. JG Strijdom was one of the several people credited with being the “father of apartheid”, and this square in central Pretoria was one of the many examples of an architectural style that can only be described as ‘brute Afrikaner’. When we were kids we spent some time in this square, being as it was, close to where we had speech lessons (do kids still take speech lessons – learning how to recite poetry and read?), and I remember waiting here many times for Elizabeth’s class to finish so we could go home.

I also remember my mother being very entertained by the fact that one year after rag week a group of students had planted empty beer bottles in Strijdom’s ears.

At some point in the late nineties, the parkade under Strijdom Square collapsed, sending old JG’s head plummeting into the depths. A more fitting end I cannot imagine.