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| ...fuck off |
Now this is interesting. This afternoon, whilst visiting a friend in hospital in Birmingham, I had the now-familiar mantra needling away in the back of my mind, "need a photo for the blog..."
When I spotted this artwork just outside the main entrance, I took my opportunity. As I approached across the busy forecourt, the crowds miraculously parted to give me an almost perfect shot.
I must confess that I was only half paying attention to framing the shot, as the last person I passed was a tall, military-looking guy dressed all in black. He was standing as if on guard, in what appeared at half glance to be light combat gear, and a flak-jacket with SECURITY in white letters across the back.
Consequently, as I was taking the shot, my mind was rushing round in circles trying to fathom exactly what sort of threat they were guarding against.
It turned out that these Security personnel were spread liberally around the hospital, including some stationed outside wards.
I have to confess, I'm baffled. Ok, so they weren't obviously carrying firearms, and the flak jacket was more likely one of those stab-vests, but still, is there really that much of a threat?
Is this unique to Birmingham, or to big cities, or to the UK? I've never seen it before, and I have to say I found it mildly disturbing on a number of levels.
But anyway, that's all a bit of a digression...
When I first checked my photo's I was disappointed that judging by the sculpture base, the camera must have been wonky. I felt that I'd not been that inaccurate, no matter how distracted. Could the sculpture really be leaning as it appears to be? It didn't seem likely, yet I felt that it was.
Then I noticed the overhead walkway support just to the left of the sculpture itself, and I can see that the camera was actually straight, and the sculpture is indeed leaning crazily!
Was this deliberate? Or a bit of disjointed planning? Did they figure it's abstract, so it doesn't really matter? I wonder how the artist feels about it...
What is it, anyway, and what does it mean? Once again, I feel the need to confess that I haven't had a moment to put any thought into that...all I see when I look at it is a big, two-fingered "Fuck off"!
Hmm, now I am thinking...who would be the target of this demeaning insult?
Maybe it's from the artist to the inept planners who paid him, but you just know they messed him about infuriatingly all the way?
Or from the NHS to all of us Plebs who turn up thinking we're going to get some sort of treatment or diagnosis?
Or from the government to the NHS, for sucking up huge wedges of cash that could otherwise be spent on guns and bombs and warships, for no discernible reason (again, where's the threat?!).
I bet there'll be some official explanation, that it represents new life and health emerging from the infinite potential of the singularity, or some such vagueness. If only I could be bothered to go and find out using, oh I don't know, some sort of web page that acted as way of finding other webpages or something?
The point of all of which is, of course, that it wasn't me that was wonky, it was the sculpture.
Also, there are a lots of things we just don't know. For instance, do you know how many questions there are in this blog post? Well, there was 12, but now there's 13.
That's a lot of questions! I remember them all fondly, and yet I don't recall many answers (previous paragraph excluded).
As I said at the top...now, this is interesting...
Or is it just me? :-p
PS for those of you paying attention, here's the punchline to today's Title and Caption;
You go first.
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