Scooters. So many scooters.
F
OUR
Do you mind if I sit here?
The man standing there with a tray in his hands is in his sixties. Handsome – for an East Asian, anyway – in your classic fifties movie star kind of way. He’s wearing a suit Cary Grant would look good in.
His hair though, I’ve never seen hair so white. Not a little bit grey, not a little bit silver. White. Like white–cotton wool white.
Yes mate, I say. I mind very much.
He says, I promise I won’t bother you. Your table is the only table with a free seat. Three, to be exact.
I look around, and he’s not wrong.
I say, Okay, and I drag my bag off the table slow, as slowly as I can.
He watches patiently. When the bag is finally on the seat next to mine, he sits down in the chair diagonally opposite me.
Much obliged, he says.
I bite a chunk out of my doughnut and stare out the window. 10 pm and this city shows no sign of slowing. Scooters buzz, people swarm, shop lights blaze.
Everything is alien. The signs in Chinese characters, the traffic, the people.
Everyone looks like me: black hair, slanted eyes. For once in my life, I don’t stick out.
For true though, these people aren’t the same as me. They walk different, carry themselves different, talk and act and gesture different. They live different.
Here I am, surrounded by ‘my people’, yet I’ve never felt more out of place in my life. I knew it back when I was a kid, and no playing, I know it now.
It’s around lunchtime in England. Mia’s probably sitting in the park in front of the gallery. Maybe in the shade of a big tree, eating last night’s leftover pasta. Maybe reading a book, if she isn’t with her friends from the studio.
Say, is that a Leica? The man is looking at my camera.
I ignore him, carry on looking out the window.
An M2? he says.
I turn to face him. Look, mister—
I have an M3, he says.
Dabbled with photography a little while ago, he says.
Wasn’t ever very good to tell you the truth, he says, but it’s a beautiful machine. Engineered close to perfection – every little detail has a purpose. Nothing is wasted or superfluous.
You’ve got to admire that level of precision, he says. Oh, and the film advance lever, there’s something so… soothing about the act of pushing it, wouldn’t you agree?
It’s only now that I realize the man’s English is perfect. Unlike everyone else here, he has an English accent, with a hint of the Midlands in there.
I give in. What’s with your accent?
He smiles. Ah, I went to university in Birmingham – lived there for eight years. My girlfriend at the time was from Birmingham, too.
I’m thinking, this is crazy; Birmingham is an hour from where I grew up. As a kid, I used to go there with my parents all the time.
He says, I don’t have to be a detective to guess that you’re a photographer – especially with an old film camera like that.
I don’t get on with digital cameras, he says. They strip the soul out of photography. With film, you’re affecting the photographs with your hands. And the smell of the chemicals in the darkroom, there’s nothing like it.
I bite another chunk out of the doughnut, and I can’t help but think this guy gets it.
What kind of photography do you do? he says.
Street and documentary, I say.
I’m going to get another doughnut, he says. Do you want one?
I shrug, and off he goes to the counter.
When he comes back, he’s carrying an entire platter of doughnuts – eight of them – all different types and flavours. And two more coffees. The one he places in front of me is black, just how I like it.
He sits down, this time in the chair directly opposite mine.
Please, he says, help yourself.
