Inside and Out

There are parts of the North East that aspirational people aspire to in their droves. None stick out as much as the horrific Newcastle satellite suburb of Darras Hall. Situated on the North West boundary of the city outskirts, it’s basically one long street with gated houses running it’s entire length. Some of them are older, classically styled things housing the successful consultants/captains of industry etc, some are bungalows housing the decrepit and retired successful pensioner consultants/captains of industry and the remainder are gargantuan monstrosities replete with roman pillars, waterfall features, swimming pools, rooms with scalextric sets, and gold taps housing the footballer contingent, e-wankers, and drug dealers who haven’t quite been caught yet. It’s a place that I would never consider calling my home no matter how rich I get. Living behind a wall, sporting electronic gates, and having to get my milk from Waitrose will never appeal – just not that “aspirational” thank …

Welcome back all. The surge in post-lockdown property photography has promptly stalled -after the initial boom caused by the backlog of jobs that had built up at the end of March. The holiday-let part of my working week continues to provide bits and pieces, but the bread-and-butter real estate stuff seems to have slowed down considerably. Out of interest, here'a graph showing my levels of revenue (sales) over the last 14 months. The two main troughs were caused by the current crisis obviously, and last year's few days off to have my neck operation. My income is heavily dependent on a small number of clients, and if any one of them goes under, or decides to drop me for a cheaper option, then things begin to get hairy. That's what happened at the end of 2019, when an upmarket Newcastle estate agency began to pile on the jobs, only to realise that it was actually costing money - resulting in a sudden reversal of policy. Probably a good decision considering current circumstanc…

In this new working environment, it's important to do my utmost to minimise the risks to everybody involved in the process of photographing building interiors. It's quite clear how this awful virus propagated quickly and extensively in the first place when you look back at how our lives were conducted. In a typical week I'd visit ten to 15 random properties, shake many hands, touch hundreds of light switches and other inanimate objects - including toilet seats, bins, door handles, kitchen implements, towels, mats, toiletries, etc, and then visit cafes, public toilets, shops, and the viral-growing centre of my son's primary school. I would have the opportunity to wash my hands before leaving the house, and maybe once during the day if I was at a service station or whatever. It never crossed my mind that I was constantly being exposed to ultra-microscopic harbingers of misery, and that I may be carrying them myself. I was actually pretty good at ducking the annual wave o…

One of the last jobs I completed before this lockdown malarkey, was at the Coble Quays apartments on the waterside in Amble - known as "The friendliest port", and home to a good selection of holiday homes of all sorts.  Mind you, it didn't seem that friendly as I walked to the Coop to get something for tea, as some heroin-withered old skank staggered out of the Queen Street boozer cursing like Popeye - followed by a troglodyte nutcase angrily clutching a bottle of alcopop charva-juice.
This development was built a few years ago, and isn't fully occupied yet. The view from each apartment is spectacular at all times of the year, especially from this one - built for the developer himself, and on this particular March morning the sunshine was casting it's spell on the blue/green sea and coastal stretch to the north. It's a short walk to my own village, and the statuesque Warkworth Castle looked fantastic in the spring light. This was a bigger job than I'd im…

Coming out of enforced lockdown before much of the wider non-essential population has meant that I've had to adjust my working routines so that I can accommodate the rest of my life and responsibilities. The world of commerce frankly doesn't care about the personal needs of workers or any difficulties that they may face (in general), and I feel that the leaders of most large organisations believe that it's going to be business as usual for the minions. The lowest paid members of the workforce (cannon-fodder) who have had to put up with even more stress while the comfortables have sat safely at home will continue to risk their welfare for nine quid an hour, while being scapegoated for stock shortages and necessary physical distancing measures by ungrateful dickheads who regard them as little more than slaves. The dedicated and professional workforce within the NHS will continue to be underfunded - their compensation being some middle class wankers banging pots and pans once…

Yours truly has come out of hibernation, and has been thrust - completely unprepared - into a population that has been separated into two distinct sections - cannon fodder, and the comfortables.


The comfortables are those with secure, regular white collar jobs who have been largely untouched by the current situation. There's no trips to the match, pub, or expensive restaurant obviously, but that's been compensated for by huge household savings, and therefore a huge increase in expenditure on food and alcohol at home. Comfortables could feasibly be converted into cannon-fodder in due course, when the bosses and shareholders have to start reaching into their own pockets to pay salaries, and decide it's time to pull up the drawbridge and make people redundant. The comfortables are pretty much insulated from the effects of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, both in economic and infection terms for the time being.

The cannon-fodder makes up the remainder of the population. Largely forced to w…