2013-09-30

Guided tour



During one of our rare weekends_without_children we visited Tjolöholms castle south of Göteborg. One of the advantages of being without kids is that you can take a guided tour, and actually listen and learn something, instead of using 100% of your attention span trying to dampen your offspring's destructive forces.
But when one of the elderly participants of the tour suddenly falls to the ground and your first thought is 'Ambulance, we need an ambulance here Now' and you get out your phone, dial 122, fuck, 112, your heart races, your hands are shaking, (meanwhile someone else checks on the man), you finally (30 seconds after the head hit the ground, but if felt like 300) get someone on the other line, 'I am at Tjolhöholms slott (yes I know it sounds made up, but it is a real place), an elderly man has crashed to the ground during a tour, we need an ambulance' My voice is totally transformed, tence, concentrated. The man at SOS alarm askes me something and then the connection drops. Fuck. Walls consisting of a meter of rock is not the best thing for cell phones, why did they not think of that a hundred and ten years ago whilst building the place? I run around trying to get more bars on my phone and get a callback. They tell me a car is on the way and then I loose them again. Fuck.
I return to the group and the man is awake. He is groggy but starting to recover. He says he is ok and refuses that he needs to go to a hospital. After a while he gets some help to sit up on a chair and he looks, not good, but ok. When he fell I immediately thought that his heart had stopped, but it seems that he fainted due to the heat and the crowded space.
The man from SOS alarm calls me back once again and I explain the current situation and he determines that ok, we turn the ambulance around, but that we should call back if the situation changes for the worse again.
I hang up and try to compose myself. I am shaking. I am crying. After a minute or two I return to the tour that had resumed, but for the next twenty minutes I am zoned out and learn very little of the thrilling story of the castles history.
In the end I contributed next to nothing, but in the moment it was as real as things get.

2013-09-10

Pact

Some time ago I went into a pact with a friend. We were to push each other to be more creative, my friend was to write and submit something to some contest, and I was to submit something to a photography contest.

And swooosh, the deadlines that we had put up said as they rushed by. Swooosh. No contests yet.

But maybe, just maybe, something good will come out of it. I have recently signed up on a new (to me) photography site. I hope that it will be as good as usefilm.com, that disappeared a year ago due to a catastrophic server crash (back up your shit folks), was. The idea is that you can submit photos and get and give critiques and ratings. The good thing is that you learn a lot and get inspired and encouraged. The problem is that you look at some really good work and get discouraged because your own work does not measure up...

Anyhow, I intend to build up my portfolio from scratch, and if you are interested you can have a look here.