Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Chickens, Foxes and Slides


This little restaurant just opened near the Baker Street tube station. I love the name and the window, but I'm a little confused about the relevance of the foxes. If the restaurant is serving up the chickens, are we, as the predators, the foxes?

I realized after I took the picture that I actually know the woman walking past. What are the odds? She's a substitute teacher at the school where I work.

Another day spent mostly at home on the couch, which is not entirely a bad thing, I must say. This cold is still pretty mild but I haven't really felt like getting out and doing much. Still, I complained to Dave about feeling trapped inside, and he responded by getting tickets to hear the London Philharmonic perform Sibelius No. 5 -- one of my favorites -- last night. What a husband! We also heard an incredible percussion piece performed by Dame Evelyn Glennie, whose lively and precise style is doubly amazing given that she has been profoundly deaf since childhood. She performs barefoot to feel the vibrations of the orchestra behind her. Mind-blowing!


This gigantic bag of trash is sitting in front of a house down the street. Do you see all those photographic slides? There are thousands of them -- not to mention old books and notebooks and other stuff, all being discarded. I confess I looked through some of the slides to see if there were any interesting ones. Many appeared to be images of old Victorian-era cartoons and artworks -- looks like research for someone's dissertation, maybe.

I did pick up a little box of 40 slides that seem to be original photos. I'm having them scanned. As a photographer I just can't stand the idea of original photos being tossed out in the trash. Dave is a bit appalled by this, and I'm aware of the ethical considerations, especially given that I have lamented the likelihood that my own private materials will wind up in the trash one day. But after all, there are books based on found photographs and found journals, and I looked long enough at the slides I grabbed to know that they're not hugely private. I don't think they even show any people.

I'll share some of them with you if they're any good.

Just call me Nosey McNoseface.

In any case, the contents of that immense trash bag were dampened by rain only hours later, and we've had lots more rainfall since. By now, everything else there is beyond rescuing.

12 comments:

Alphie Soup said...

That is one huge bag of trash. Glad you poked around among the slides - you never know what you might find!!

Alphie

Yorkshire Pudding said...

Hello Nosey McNoseface!
Well done for having the imagination to rescue some of those slides. I am looking forward to a visual taste of what you found. As for the new cafe, I am told that roasted fox is delicious.

John Going Gently said...

Ji dont fancy swimming in THAT paddling pool

Marty said...

I shudder to think of the number of forgotten slides in our basement, and we're also the keeper of my mother-in-law's photo albums, never mind our own. Some of the people are unidentifiable at this point. It wouldn't be such a bad thing for someone else to find value in them.

Ms. Moon said...

Did you read any of the notebooks?
Wow. Just...wow.
And you do have a wonderful husband.

ellen abbott said...

my sister is in possession of the thousands of slides my father took when we were growing up. we've discussed how to get them digital. you say you sent them off? somehow I thought you scanned all yours yourself.

e said...

I hope you feel like yourself soon and that was a wonderful treat from your husband!

Sharon said...

I remember the time I got rid of a lot of slide carousels. I had so many that if you stacked them from the ground up they would have been taller than me. I didn't discard the slides, just the carousels.

Lorianne said...

I just finished A Life Discarded, which I loved, so of course that's what I immediately thought of when you mentioned poking through the trash. While reading the book (and again while reading this post) I remembered an instance from my childhood when a neighbor was evicted and my ever-frugal mother salvaged some plates and clothing from the heap of belongings the landlord had left out as trash.

(Talk about ethical implications: my mother remarked that she was afraid the neighbor would come back to find one of us wearing one of her outfits.)

So yes, I would have been tempted by the books and notebooks, but probably less so by slides.

Elizabeth said...

There IS something really sad about that trash -- the detritus of other lives. I'd be curious, too. And who knows -- maybe it'll be another Vivian Meier-like discovery!

Red said...

Our daughter will be looking after our affairs ans she teases us about putting all our treasures in the trash. I don't like it but that's what's gonna happen. so I think that's probably what's going on with the big bag of trash you discovered.

jenny_o said...

It would be cool to know why the restaurant is named Chicken and Foxes. I'm always intrigued by why people name things as they do - and there's always a reason.

Lovely and thoughtful thing for Dave to do! Let us know how it went?

Looking forward to any of the mystery slides you choose to post. I love old photos of any kind.