1. 
   Naomi
   November 27th, 2008
   

   This really reminded me of an article in the Guardian magazine a few months ago about public spaces in cities/towns and how they are increasingly being sold to some kind of corporations who can actually create their own rules for who can walk into these spaces and how they can use them. Which reminds me of being in London yesterday just looking for a bench to sit on and actually having to walk for half an hour to find one because there just aren’t any – even in train stations! I can’t believe how train stations don’t have anywhere to sit – and of course no bins but that’s another story, or another part of the same one. And that reminds me of a situation in Derby at the moment with young people in the market place. There is a war memorial which has been adopted by young people as a meeting/hanging out place and there’s been an ongoing campaign (think the Derby Evening Telegraph has been involved) to try and stop them from sitting on it. So they’ve now put a load of metal spikes (slightly stunted tops, but still) all around the memorial to stop people sitting on it… except that the young people still do, just find ways of sitting between the spikes or on top of them. Here’s to reclaiming public spaces as spaces where the public are able to not just go, walk through or shop through but actually be in and experience them.

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2. 
   Lucy Lepchani
   November 28th, 2008
   

   Excellent that you have managed to take and print a ’subversive’ photograph. Every time I hear about these security guards eradicating civil liberties in a private place/shopping centre/etc, it sends me into a ‘my-grandfather-didn’t-fight-in-the-trenches-so-that-middle-class-tossers-could-sneak-fascim-in-through-their-gated-communities’, outburst.What this country needs (now I sound like my grandma) is more guerilla photographers like yourself before we have to show identity cards to even breathe the air. And if ‘googlemaps’ can get away with it, why not ordinary folk?
   Power to the poets!

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3. 
   Rukus
   December 4th, 2008
   

   “We’re all in Starbucks but some of us are looking out the window”…. lol Very deep!! I like the way you write… really funny and your way of describing is very ‘ill’ in a good sense…lol (you would make a good poet…..lol)

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4. 
   Pete Hunter
   January 20th, 2009
   

   Coming back from a gig on our Paralalia tour in 2007 we stopped at a motorway rest break so remote I can’t even remember its name. We made our way through a maze of yellow-brick low level buildings housing shops that all seemed to be variations on PoundStretcher (Quids-R-Us, Cheap’N'Charity, EntireStockA Fiver) and past a public funded but committee agreed life-sized sculpture of 5 badly carved cowboys, to the ‘cafe’.
   Entering this hall of culinary delights was like stepping back into a works canteen in 1973. I feared for a moment that we’d joined Sam Tyler in the world of LifeOn Mars. The room harked back to a time before moulded chairs and tables, design and decor and cholesterol awareness, so much so that I thought I’d record it on my digital camera (if that would still work in this time-slip) for retro-posterity.
   I skulked near the door, trying to get the widest angle to capture the greatest amount of tedious detail, I even crouched low to give the place the sense of perspective it clearly lacked, when I noticed a woman in a navy blazer two-piece watching me whilst talking to a man in a pale blue bry-nylon shirt and black slacks. They were casting concerned glances my way and discussing me in hushed tones. Eventually the man approached and asked what I was doing. I thought it was pretty obvious, seeing as I was holding a camera to my eye, although perhaps they didn’t recognise the modern technology.
   Before I could answer he said, rather firmly, ‘You’re not allowed to take photographs in here.’

   Me being me, and not wanting a fuss, apologised immediately and didn’t ask for a reason, I just accepted his assertion and bowed to his sense of authority. I even held the camera screen up for him to witness me deleting the two pictures I had taken; proving to him that I wasn’t the terrorist or, worse, satirist he perhaps perceived me to be (I was unshaven at the time).

   Satisfied, he returned to talking to the be-blazered lady; together they made a note on a clip-board. This seemed sinister, like my card had been marked and later that day there would be someone in an enormous warehouse-like office filled with row upon row of filing cabinets that stretched as far as the eye could see both into the distance and upwards, would be carrying a manilla folder containing a full report of this minor photographic misdemeanor in order to slip it into the burgeoning file of social faux-pas that was my life.

   Resigned, I joined my friends at thier table. The 4 TVs placed high on the walls blurted out horseracing from Chepstow. My coffee was tepid.

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5. 
   Pete Hunter
   January 21st, 2009
   

   Re: We’re all in starbucks, but some of us are looking out the window.

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/barack-obama-inauguration-us-speech

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