Little ripples groove the plain of sand like a dog’s mouth (I took that description from a book, but it is the best analogy) and our footprints mess the perfect pattern, but I’m distracted by the sea; rushing and swirling up unseen channels to lick round your feet and cut you off from the land, it is green like a sea dragon’s mouth.

The strawberry syrup slows my tongue, provides some drag; chocolate flakes are not what they used to be, tasting as woody as the twigs they resemble now, that has changed; I debate whether an oyster ice would have been better, but the wafer looked stale; no chance of errant dribbles, the base is licked clean and smooth.

The bunker sinks into the dune where it once stood proud, scanning the horizons for ships and planes; black and grey damp walls coldly frame a beautiful picture postcard oblong of sea, sky and sand. Did they see the beauty of the view? Or just the promise of invading hordes? Did the birds still trip along the beach, perching on mine prongs?

Long exposure photography DIY

Gendercide

- The systematic or planned extermination of an entire group based on sex or gender (urbandictionary.com)

According to The Economist: “In China and northern India more than 120 boys are being born for every 100 girls. Nature dictates that slightly more males are born than females to offset boys’ greater susceptibility to infant disease. But nothing on this scale.”

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Peter Hitchins in the Daily Mail (UK Newspaper):

“By the year 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women of marriageable age in this giant empire [China], so large and so different (its current population is 1,336,410,000) that it often feels more like a separate planet than just another country. Nothing like this has ever happened to any civilisation before… All kinds of speculation is now seething about what might happen; a war to cull the surplus males, a rise in crime, a huge expansion in the prostitution that is already a major industry in every Chinese city, a rise in homosexuality. .. She asked the abortionist if he ever aborted boys. He gaped. ‘Are you mad?’ he almost shouted, ‘Nobody aborts boys unless they are deformed. Girls are what we abort.’ … Once you know more about China’s attitude to girls, it is surprising that so many survive. Yuan Quan told me of her own experience: ‘When I was a little girl my grandparents doted on me, and gave me generous presents. I was their first and only grandchild. But when my aunt had a son, it all stopped… ‘They said to me, “You are only a girl. You are spilt water.”‘  This cold, dismissive expression is universally used about unwanted daughters  -  and to their faces.”

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The Hotel Room

When I came out he looked as though he was putting something in his pocket. I was pretty sure I knew he had read the letters. His eyes were dark and brooding and he smirked as I came and sat next to him again. ”Sit close, Tara” , he said. “Did you know you dropped something before. I think it was meant for me anyway. I can’t get up at the moment. I’ve got a massive erection. You really are too much you know….”

Life Drawing

With long curving gestures, his hand moves over his page, my ears prick up at each sweeping stroke, wondering what he is taking in of me. With my arm raised, bent at the elbow, my wrist underneath the back of my head, I gently finger a piece of my long, dark hair. My round breasts are in full view, with pink nipples still erect from the cool shower. I open my eyes for a moment, we lock in an overwhelming gaze. I feel my cheeks flush and avert my eyes, down across his toned chest, admiring his beautiful brown skin.

The Merciless Corset

Her red lips, outlined in black, and her grey eyes did not look familiar to her. She was hot and breathless yet anonymous, no longer under her own control. He could hear her coming into the living room. She entered. The faint light gleamed on her curves. She stood in the middle of the room and he stood to go over to her to tighten up the merciless corset. Once done, he sat back down to observe her, unbuttoning his trousers to take his cock out to stroke it gently.

I like seeing the little human details that transcend the different clothes and contexts: a cook playing with the ship’s cat in the 1901 Liverpool Cunard video, an injured war veteran getting newfangled hydrotherapy at Devonshire Hospital pulling funny faces and winking at the camera in 1916, the bouncing quiff-haired 1905 baby having a brisk bath. And who can resist the Central Council for Health Education’s 8 minute cinematic masterpiece on headlice?

Looking through the different videos in the archive, it’s interesting to note in which ones you identify with the people being featured? Which films and settings could you imagine yourself in? The 1960s look modern, with similar clothes and hair, but the turn of the century films seem alien. The World War I land army girls are clearly very capable though, in sturdy clothes marshalling hefty cows; I’m not sure what they would make of today’s footballers’ wives, size zero and Closer magazine?

The dramatic Siberian scenes of the ‘Snow’ video below are perhaps the most beautifully shot and edited. Tugging on all of my heartstrings that are still dearly tied to British Rail (the relatively recently privatised national rail service) it makes me long for the chance to see a snow plough steam engine cutting through drifts that big just once. The passengers sit in their warm buffet car, whilst workers on the line clear the track, puffs of smoke from the engine drifting past the windows.

Alas, I think my chance to see that particular scene has long gone, but this valuable archive is a great way to relive some of my British history and cultural roots.

I shan’t tell you its name – the island is practically not of this world anyway, inaccessible apart from the three planes who make a noble if slightly laboured appearance every week; relegated to shuttling this barely necessary route; the airport is incongruous, ashore I sense tall ships and the ghosts of homesick sailors lounging in the shadow of the dark volcanic marine barracks; we go up the look-out peak to survey our kingdom; it’s a bizarre Tracy Island landscape of cardboard houses and empty roads, with bays curving in orderly scallops around its fringe; the only animal occupants are curious donkeys, and fearless crabs who give our oncoming car the finger with their angry red oversized claw.

Djemma el Fna square, Morocco, sunset during Ramadan 2008; birds sweeping in flocks overhead looking to roost; I am sat on the large outdoor terrace of a restaurant, watching the night market sellers set up their stalls, and the people beginning to gather; story-tellers, tooth-pullers, monkey-handlers, fez salesman, dried fig and date vendors; my neighbour strikes up a conversation, he is an artist and writes recommendations of authors, books and sufis on a paper napkin in curlicued Arabic; a muezzin starts up his Maghrib, the sunset call to prayer, which hypnotises the terrace with its repetitive wail full of love; across the square two more chants join him, out of time with each other like a singing round, and the space echoes with the noise that is alien to me, yet tells my artist friend “I am home”.