..Vettriano

I see four whole police officers parading the high street. And not of the Community Support variety either. Given this morning's revelation in either the Guardian or the Telegraph, I am sure I am witnessing most of the county's force standing outside Primark. Another Kodak moment missed. I wonder when I lost the limb that was my SLR, the battered chunky camera that used to be attached to me with such ferocity that I was given a 'friendly word' at the train station upon suspicion of being an IRA member, and had it removed from my shoulder as I went with a friend to court to hand some paperwork in, and dropped it in the sea at 3am convinced I was a desperate hero trying to coax a local doorman out of ending his life. None of these were isolated incidents, but I no longer carry it around. Used to living in a council-estate nowhere, with no sea, no cafes, no people to photograph, nothing but row upon row of dreary flat-packed houses and hoods pulled up and fag ends, it sits on the shelf in my sunshine yellow bedroom, winking its big eye at the same wall day in, day out.
I stride past the supermarket, an unlikely scene-setter for a love affair, and a foreman pointing a camera towards some handiwork mistakes my smile for flirtatiousness, and smiles back. I am in the way. i strike a pose for his camera, laugh to myself, and stroll on.
The shop on the corner still displays the Vettriano that watched me, unsympathetically, stand and sigh and sob in bursts after each rekindled moment of a doomed whatever-it-was, and I stand there again and still wish I could afford it.