HELLO, it’s a pleasure to see you!
Let’s take a break—from clients and peddlers, vendors and deadlines—and journey to County Durham, Northern England, where we once lived. Come along!
SECRET MESSAGE IN GRAFFITI
The chill is damp and familiar. The Winter sun is low, casting long, intense shadows.
We hop on the bus into town and step off near the Cathedral. A soft mist touches our skin. Wrapping coats close, we walk briskly by the Castle and down the steep hill, squeezing around message boards outside ancient pubs advertising the day’s specials in white chalk. The smell of beer, old wood and pipe tickle our consciousness.
We reach Market Square where pigeons loiter for handouts. The singular scent of the chip shop and a baby’s cry waft unison through the air. There’s no place we need to be, no agenda, no calendar. The cell phone is silenced. Let’s go this way.
We turn down muddy footpaths, amble across bridges, stare downriver.
Strolling into Town Centre, between TopShop and a coffee shop, we spot a lonely grey-cobbled passage from here to, where?
Sheltered between high windowless walls, wide shallow steps, sunken by wear, lead upward. Delicate mauve-blossomed weeds thrive in cracks, hanging to soil that’s barely dust, dancing indifferent to the breeze. It’s quiet but for the shuffle of discarded cups and glossy wrappers grazing the cobbled joints, zigging and zagging in reckless abandon.
We’re in a place ill-matched to Durham pristine. Concrete-turned-canvas hosts cryptic artwork, bulbous word shapes outlined in black, airbrushed in vivid fluorescent shades. Signatures scrawled in lavish curves—first names, dates and faraway places... Expressions of love, insolence, slander; initials crammed in distorted hearts; a rustic arrow, a radical quote—in permanent pen and ink and paint.
Time-lapsed throngs color the walls in dizzying fast-forward. Days and nights roll through the space where we stand alone, lost to memorials in this forgotten graveyard of bold, impassioned words, abandoned one atop another in slow-sinking daylight under sky and open air.
We venerate the moment and draw away. We have glimpsed into Time itself.
High up the hill, Cathedral bells deliver the evensong toll.
We hop on the bus into town and step off near the Cathedral. A soft mist touches our skin. Wrapping coats close, we walk briskly by the Castle and down the steep hill, squeezing around message boards outside ancient pubs advertising the day’s specials in white chalk. The smell of beer, old wood and pipe tickle our consciousness.
We reach Market Square where pigeons loiter for handouts. The singular scent of the chip shop and a baby’s cry waft unison through the air. There’s no place we need to be, no agenda, no calendar. The cell phone is silenced. Let’s go this way.
We turn down muddy footpaths, amble across bridges, stare downriver.
Strolling into Town Centre, between TopShop and a coffee shop, we spot a lonely grey-cobbled passage from here to, where?
Sheltered between high windowless walls, wide shallow steps, sunken by wear, lead upward. Delicate mauve-blossomed weeds thrive in cracks, hanging to soil that’s barely dust, dancing indifferent to the breeze. It’s quiet but for the shuffle of discarded cups and glossy wrappers grazing the cobbled joints, zigging and zagging in reckless abandon.
We’re in a place ill-matched to Durham pristine. Concrete-turned-canvas hosts cryptic artwork, bulbous word shapes outlined in black, airbrushed in vivid fluorescent shades. Signatures scrawled in lavish curves—first names, dates and faraway places... Expressions of love, insolence, slander; initials crammed in distorted hearts; a rustic arrow, a radical quote—in permanent pen and ink and paint.
Time-lapsed throngs color the walls in dizzying fast-forward. Days and nights roll through the space where we stand alone, lost to memorials in this forgotten graveyard of bold, impassioned words, abandoned one atop another in slow-sinking daylight under sky and open air.
We venerate the moment and draw away. We have glimpsed into Time itself.
High up the hill, Cathedral bells deliver the evensong toll.
• • •
Dissonance and artistry capture my camera. Among the spot-lit chaos, a mysterious message. It’s a sign.
