Waiting

I do love a backlit bus-shelter. I'd hoped to keep a bit more detail in the highlighted area, but only other photographers notice or care about that sort of thing. In the end, it's the overall effect that counts. 

In fact, now I come to think of it, I really like all those transitional places – bus-shelters, bus-stops, railway platforms, cafés, and so on – where we are open to the in-between moments when one thing has paused and another has yet to start, and certain realities are foregrounded that normally lie hidden in the busy background. Waiting around can be a sort of enforced meditative interlude: the poem "Adlestrop" by Edward Thomas captures the feeling exactly.

These don't need to be actual places, of course: there are times in life like that, too, ranging from passing idle moments of "wool-gathering" – I'm a past master at staring out of the window – to longer periods, such as the weeks between ending one job and beginning another. As one who has spent a working lifetime within the rhythms of the academic year, I immediately think of those summer weeks between the end of exams and the receipt of results, and then the release into a month or two of leisured irresponsibility for the lucky few, or a first taste of employment (or, more likely these days, unemployment) for the rest.

Just now, quite a few spaces are waiting for us: where'd everybody go? Sadly, the Nuffield Theatre (which, if you know what you're looking for, can be seen reflected in the view of a backlit university café below) will be remaining empty for some time: the Covid shutdown has driven it into "administration". Although this happened so very quickly – by the end of April – that you have to wonder whether opening a second venue in the city centre was such a good idea after all. But it's a shame to see forward-looking optimism punished quite so brutally.