Mirrors

Peripatetic Postings is the virtual space in which occasional random, disparate strands of yarn are plucked from the time-worn fabric of the lives of two middle-aged men who like, among other things, their photography, then woven together, just for fun.

Dave, as those of you who are reading his journal this week will know, is, voluntarily, sensorily deprived, working long hours, mostly in the dark, which would explain his recent appreciation of the crisply delineated early morning light this October has been heaping upon our sceptred isle.

Even though he and I are now separated geographically, on Thursday evening I felt I’d made contact with at least an echo of my old mate. It was when I visited one of our common venues this week, when the delightful Emma (the boss) made her usual thoroughly professional job of cutting my wayward hair, which nowadays is an assortment of grey which grows at alarmingly different rates across my head.

As a photographer, I often like playing with mirror shots. Keeping my head as still and level as I could, I lowered my eyes to focus on an arrangement of scissors lying on the glass shelf in front of me. Once the cut was over, I explained my intention. Emma’s reaction was, thoughtfully, to clean the work surface, so that I could make a neater picture. It was all part of the service-with-a-smile attitude prevalent at my local branch of Sweeney Todd’s.