Being as I have farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr too much time on my hands I tend to mooch about and take photographs more often than I used to.
The last time I was driving through Teesside I couldn't help but notice the post-industrial post-apocalyptic wasteland and think....hmmmmnnnnn. This would make a great photographic essay!
So today we happened to be driving through Haverton Hill, in Cleveland when we passed all these cooling towers and interestingly-shaped...stuff.
So I said "ok stop the car".
Now I know the phrase "ok stop the car" sometimes happens in these big Hollywood movies starring Denzel Washington, but they're usually outside a bank in Chicago with a carful of people carrying Glocks and wearing hosiery on their heads and not me carrying a crappy digital camera in Teesside.
Anyway...I'm walking along a public footpath beside a public highway breathing public air and I hear this voice that says
"Excuse me, can I ask why you're taking photographs?"
I turned to find a middle-aged bloke in a navy sweater standing outside a compact car.
No badges.
No ID .
No anything.
"Erm. I like taking photographs...industrial landscapes-you know?"
By the blank look on his face he didn't.
"Would you mind if I asked you for your name and address?"
I looked at him like I would look at something I find stuck to the bottom of my boot on hot summer's day.
"No"
"No, you wouldn't mind?" he attempted, speculatively
"No. I have no intention of giving you my name and address" I replied
"Oh" he said, dischuffed "Why is that then?"
I breathed in...."Well for a few reasons...one because this isn't East Germany before the wall came down, and you aren't the Stasi"
"Stasi?" he asked. "Ah" he thought. "A foreign word. he MUST be a terrorist."
"The Stasi" I explained, in a loftily condescending tone" were the East German secret police."
If I'd said the same thing to my goldfish I'd have had the same expression.
And No. I don't own a goldfish.
The goldfish was fighting for breath "Its just that we have to be on alert for terrorists"
I looked at him, probably with the look one gives a disobedient goldfish.
" I see.
Do you think if I was Taliban I would be walking around Cleveland with a camera in broad daylight?"
"...for security reasons I have to ask you....."
I looked at him.
"You know something? For generations our father's fought and died to keep this country free from this. From you"
He got in his car and drove off.
I defiantly took some more pictures (I think the lens cap was on, but hell-it's the principle) then I got back into my car.
Evening came.
I had just taken a bath and the doorbell rang.
From the voices I gathered it was an official call.
It was a police officer.
In a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE van.
Here to investigate a report of possible terrorist activity.
He was okay.
They usually are.
Individually.
I explained the situation to him, and he seemed mildly amused.
I felt offended by the "mildly" amused bit as I thought the whole thing was totally hysterical by this stage.
The PC explained: "It's just that some areas are part of the Infrastructure Hub and may be vulnerable to terrorist activity"
""and is this Haverton Hill part of the Infrastructure Hub?" I asked
He looked briefly up at me from his notes, sighed and replied: "I really couldn't say"
"..but it's a part of the infrastructure?"
"Exactly"
"But isn't there rather a lot of this "infrastructure" in the country? I mean. Isn't everywhere part of this "infrastructure?"
He shrugged in a way that only a man who wanted to get back to the station for a coffee could shrug.
He left in a polite and faintly embarrassed way.
You know the real worry to me is that this really does represent our way of locating and dealing with terrorist threats.
Citizen with a camera, broad daylight.
Let's send a cretin with no ID to ask "Terrorist" to explain himself, then divert a copper and a van from a real crime scene to investigate when he tells him to sod off.
If the Bad Guys really wanted to blow up Billingham they would find the system this stupid.
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