Faces

Faces are here to be looked at. Even better – to be smiled at.

That might seem like stating the obvious, but so often people avoid face to face contact.

On public transport or in crowds people avert their eyes or look down. Anything but make eye contact.

(Oi cheeky! They’re not just trying to avoid making eye contact with me either. It’s everyone.)

When I was a boy in Belfast, catching the eye of a stranger was tantamount to challenging them to a fight. Ever been asked the question: “What are you lookin’ at?” It’s not a good start to a conversation

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It should have been the Jungle Book. (My X-certificate first cinema visit.)

This is the nearest I could get to an image combining both Clint Eastwood and a Jungle local.

At GrannyMar‘s prompting, I submitted this story to See You At The Pictures, a documentary about film-going in Ireland. Er… Sorry Dad.

The first film I saw in a cinema should have been the Jungle Book. My Dad took me to the cinema in Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, one bright summer afternoon.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. But it wasn’t car chases, gunfire and a naked lady

Getting lost & Going on the lam

I used to be an expert at getting lost, making myself scarce, zipping off, disappearing, escaping their clutches and going on the lam.

My advantages were size and speed.

They were bigger and longer limbed.

But I could fit under the hedge. In fact I could speed off through the hole in the hedge without slowing.

By the time my pursuers had left the back garden and gone round to next door, I was out of that garden, under the next hedge, and the next one, the next one, the next one, all the way to the end of the row.

In my pyjamas of course

Animosity

Does rarity make for intensity? The objects of my animosity are few – in fact, as a child I had only two.

One was a public figure, a demagogue alternately overpoweringly charming and ferociously frightening. Out to get me, I felt. But I didn’t really know him. Not back then anyway. I later had the pleasure experience of meeting him a number of times.

The other was a more minor figure of authority. A big fish in his small pool. My primary school