Wednesday 17 October 2007

Life: going for film to Grangetown

-I was not sure what to write today. A male pagan poledancing? Why three midgets dressed like tomatoes are Marks and Spencer food? A paper about individual differences at different stages of visual processing?-

Today, this evening at twenty past six, I left to Grangetown to get film. Somehow Royal Mail had managed to not deliver it to me and left one of those notes saying "sorry, but you weren't home". I checked redeliveries and the website didn't find my package. So I had to walk to Grangetown, one of those dingy areas of town populated by big huge shops (IKEA, a supermarket, a car dealer), empty roads and ambar coloured street lights. Actually, I took a train from central. It left me in this train station with a small roof and bench in the middle of it. Some blokes run to the departing train shouting something about killing somebody. I walk down the stairs and into the road.

I get my film, unpack it and ditch it in my rucksack. Forty rolls of thirty five mill and thirty rolls of one twenty. Total, a hundred and twenty quid. Better this way than the last one, when my Amazon package of books was left outside the door and somebody had just opened it (sorry pal, it was not a mp3 player).

Back on the station some guys chat under the dim light. Two guys on the stairs smoke and one of them asks the other, "is he foreign?", "no, don't think so". The bunch of people on the bench make me look posh and stylish by comparison. One of them is a woman with a stray dog. Half of the group departs for a train. A man, small, without many teeth turns and asks "what's your names?" and they exchange a few names before he finally jumps on the train. And I still have to wait eight minutes there.

On the way home I stop in Subway for dinner. When I sit down a woman enters and orders her sandwich with double cheese and bacon. Wow, we still have higher classes. I check her out, but the additional money spent doesn't make her any less unattractive.

3 comments:

Anthony Brockway said...

In Cardiff it is known as Strangetown. You were on the outskirts of that particular locale - not really the residential area. Some guy was attacked and put in a coma at Grangetown train station a while back. Not a good place to hang out at night.

J. Karanka said...

Hey Anthony, I knew you would like this one!

Anthony Brockway said...

Actually, Grangetown station during the day might be quite a good place to shoot. A bit forlorn; nice views of the city; railway tracks disappearing into the distance always look cool. The cafe on Queen Street station would be another interesting locale. Transient citizens are often interesting subjects. The down side of course is that people might think you are a trainspotter!