I love photos. In one of my many houses at university, I had a whole corridor whose walls were papered with photographs I’d taken throughout the course of the previous year. It may well have looked a bit serial killer-ish, but I liked it (until I took them all down shortly before moving out and discovered the wall behind was actually damp and mouldy—thanks a lot, scumbag landlord) and it provided a nice visual record of what had gone on.
This was in the days before digital cameras were particularly widespread, of course, so these were actual photos on actual paper. I took a lot of photos, but there was still no way it’d be possible to take as many as you can with today’s cameras. That meant that each captured memory had to be just so, and there was no going back to try again; you caught it, or you missed it. Simple as that.
Of course, nowadays, it’s much easier to capture and keep a memory, assuming you don’t do something ridiculous to your computer like take it into the bath with you. But that doesn’t mean photos lose any of their impact, or the memories contained therein. I’ll bet I can take a random selection of photos from my iPhoto library and be able to explain each and every one of them.
In fact, let’s do just that. I’ll give you ten, just so we’re not here all night. Hold on, I’ll be right back.
So without further ado, here we go.
Would you look at that? We went and got a nice one to begin with. This is the wedding day (obviously) of my friends Rob and Rachel. Instead of confetti, they had bubbles. It was awesome, and we all ate a lot of food and got quite drunk. Fact: Rob and Rachel were one of the first couples I knew who got together at university and are still going strong today. I salute you, you lovely pair.
Aha. There are actually two separate stories behind this one. The guy in white makeup is, I believe, a chap called James Gaynor, who was starring alongside me in a production of Marivaux’s L’Epreuve, also known as A Test of Character. He was playing a character called Frontin, I was playing a character called Lucidor. Lucidor was in love with a girl called Angelique, who was played by a most lovely lady named Sarah, but there was a long and complicated plot involving Frontin pretending to court her on Lucidor’s behalf and it all got a bit French.
As for the mobile phone and the text on it: the mobile phone was mine at the time (Nokia REPRESENT), “sonicfunkstars” was the name of the fake band I made music under (using Sony’s ACID Music software and approximately 24 CDs of samples, most of which I probably never used) and “txtr’s thumb” was the name of my second album. Interestingly (not really), “sonicfunkstars” is still my Xbox LIVE ID, and it’s one of the only places on the Internet where I’m not “angryjedi” or some variant thereof. The other is YouTube.
(Exclusive: I found the title track from said album. It used to irritate the fuck out of anyone with a Nokia phone. You’ll see why.)
Ah yes. I can tell you exactly what is going on here. This is during my second year at university. The location is my friend Chris’ bedroom. Under the desk is Sam, who is drunk, and spent most of the night seeing what tiny spaces he could contort himself into.
Lying on the floor is Steph, who is reading a book—possibly Bridget Jones’ Diary. In the background is her erstwhile boyfriend Brett, my most enduring memory of whom is when he burst in the front door of Steph’s house, furious that “someone’s drawn knobs all over my car”. Someone had indeed drawn knobs in the snow that was all over his car, and Sam and I naturally knew absolutely nothing about it.
But that was not the occasion in this photo. No. This was simply a social gathering at Chris’ house—Sam, Steph and I were all flatmates in the first year, so we often took the opportunity to hang out together. We’d “lost” a couple of flatmates along the way to other social groups, but we’d stuck together for a lot of the time.
One of whom was the rather magnificent Beki, seen pictured here with Sam, again. This photo was taken on our hall of residence bar’s “70s Night”, a night where only the six of us from Flat A33, Hartley Grove Halls, Southampton, made the effort to dress up. Sam is wearing a woman’s shirt.
Whizz forward to last year, and we have a picture of a game of Scotland Yard in progress, one of the very few games I’m aware of that provide you with a hat as part of its components. Pictured is Tom. Not pictured is Sam. And me. Obviously.
This Post-It space invader adorned the front wall of Ruffian Games’ studios in Dundee. Obviously a little light relief after getting Crackdown 2 out the door.
Back in time to the first year at university again, we see here the midst of Operation Shopping Trolley, our attempts to stealthily remove the shopping trolley that had inexplicably appeared in our flat overnight. “Inexplicably” as in for once it wasn’t one of us who had brought it up. Notice the cunning ninja disguises Sam and I have adopted.
This is Dungeonquest, one of either the best or worst games ever created depending on your outlook. It’s a game where you have an approximately 23% chance of survival (they tell you this in the instruction booklet), and is almost completely determined by blind luck. Combat is resolved almost literally by rock-paper-scissors… except here it’s slash-mighty blow-leap aside. I was astonished to discover that they have actually remade this monstrosity. I was also quite tempted to pick up a copy, but that would be a very silly idea.
To this date, this is still the most literary piece of graffiti I’ve ever seen, found on the back of the cubicle door in the gents’ toilets in The Hobbit pub, Southampton. The whole door was something to behold; there were full-on conversations and slagging matches going on between various wall-writers, an excerpt of which you can see here. Theatre Studies was repeatedly accused of gayness. A bit rich coming from people hanging out in gents’ toilets.
And why don’t we end with this one, then? This offensive masterpiece was produced by the cast of Southampton “Rattlesnake!” Theatre Group’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Round and Round The Garden whilst finishing off rehearsals prior to taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe. We’d all gone a little bit stir crazy by then, and so we took to lite-vandalising the whiteboards in the lecture theatre where we’d been rehearsing. (“Lite” because you could just rub it off. But we did leave it there for the lecturer to discover in the morning.)
Look closely and you’ll see a selection of details; Pac-Man re-imagined to become Sonic the Hedgehog eating shit, some stickpeople having a threesome, some anagrams, a victim’s eye view of the Ku Klux Klan looking down on someone they’ve just thrown down a well, an out-of-context stage direction from the play made to sound dirty just by the simple addition of “just the way I like it” and my excellent drawing of the entire cast of the show, except me, because while I was quite happy to draw all the others I didn’t feel confident drawing myself. Also, BUTTOCKS.
There you go. Proof that I have an incredible memory for silly crap. And proof that even if you’ve forgotten me, I probably haven’t forgotten you.
