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A YOUNG GUY in baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt broke quickly from his huddled group and stepped into our path - a tree-lined path through New York's notorious Central Park.
We stopped as he leaned
towards our two-year-old daughter in the pushchair. My heart stopped
too.
"Cute kid, man," he said and handed her some candy.
This was typical of the many surprises New York threw up to contradict its reputation as a city of rude people with little time of day to give. 'Avoid eye contact' is the advice given to nervous tourists. I'd like to see you try it whilst trundling along with a tot and the entire sidewalk going gaga.
Sporty-looking girls turned their rollerblades on a dime to retrieve a dropped teddy; bankers and lawyers smiled as they pulled their briefcases out of the line of fruit-juice fire, and the frantic service in the Grand Central Station Coffee Shop ground to a halt as waitresses told us about their grandchildren in 'Noo Joisey' and brought bananas and milk 'No charge'.
When Charlotte wasn't eating free she was riding free, but she bought her Mum and Dad the freedom of the city. The buses are 'stroller friendly' and there was always someone to lend a hand. Waiting for a downtown bus on Sixth Avenue, my accent led me into a discussion about Northern Ireland with a native New Yorker. On seeing Charlotte the ill-informed old lady's icy attitude melted to moisture in her eyes. Warm childcare advice replaced chilly politics.
"This city loves my baby," I thought, "I love this city!"
A&S Plaza. Lunch time. Hundreds of sharp-suited executives discussing power deals waited for the express lift to the food hall. The elevator doors hissed apart and the crowd surged forward, only to be held back by the uniformed attendant.
"I see a baby carriage, gentlemen. Please step back, they got priority!" he bellowed.
Irate expressions turned to bemused smiles as Charlotte rolled through giving them the royal wave.
New York's shops are wide-aisled and roomy - even Mothercare can be a squeeze for prams in Britain - with plenty of ramps and elevators. Barnes and Noble's Manhattan bookshop has a huge kids' reading section where the much-fingered pop-up books must surely be consigned to the skip at a frightening rate. At FAO Schwarz, the massive toy store, a tired-looking sales assistant took a Barbie doll from me, body in one hand and head in the other. He smiled down at Charlotte with a look of total forgiveness - as well he might, it was me who stood on it.
Charlotte will not remember
the day she drew a crowd in a Times Square record shop, as she
bopped wildly to an old Detroit Spinners song. "Man, you
are blessed!" the cashier told us. We will not forget the
Big sweet Apple.
When it comes to learning to
ride a motorcycle off-road, Geraint Jones says, complete novices
make the best students. Several faces around the circle relax
visibly.
"But road riders tend to be a bit stiff and don't like the
loose surface," adds the ten times British motocross champion.
The faces are tense again.
We are gathered at Geraint's farm near Llanidloes, Powys for the
Yamaha Off-road Experience. We have put on the bright motocross
garb and chosen our bikes for the day – mine is a relatively
docile WR200.
All leisure activities involving powered vehicles have to start
with a tedious briefing session – the kart marshal with a
string of well-rehearsed but shit jokes and a patronising line
with women is the worst – but Geraint Jones's briefing is
surprisingly short. All too soon we are mounted and heading out
of the farmyard, the chickens eyeing us nervously.
We follow a track up a steep hill and Geraint sets an easy, bimbling
pace. A few hundred yards beyond the hillside wood we burst out
onto a hilltop like something from the Sound of Music, curved
mountains slope away at the perfect pitch for Julie Andrews to
achieve lift-off. Terrified sheep remind us this is Wales.
With most of Wales below, Geraint starts to teach us the fundamentals
of off-road riding: sit forward on the saddle when cornering,
elbows up, looking well ahead; stand leaning forward at the waist,
legs locked-out straight. We learn throttle control first, then
braking and all the time Geraint is getting our measure –
he won't ask us to try anything beyond our ability.
But as the day progresses, river beds and forest trails lead inexorably
to a quarry racetrack with double jumps, whoops and berms, and
we start to think that maybe there isn't anything we can't do.
We discover what we can't do the next morning. Having found entire
new muscle groups and pounded them all day, we can't walk.
The following article contains language some people might find offensive
01707 646963.
It's a payphone at South Mimms services, where the A1 meets the
M25. We'd been told to ring it at 9pm every night for a week and
let it ring 15 times. On Wednesday it was answered on the eighth
ring and a man's voice gave another number. We didn't know where
that phone was but it was answered immediately by 'Chad'. That's
what he said we could call him.
Chad has a Porsche 911 with twin turbos and a radar detector.
He also has some very serious friends. They race around the M25
for kicks and the occasional side bet - a couple of hundred at
a time, nothing heavy.
Rumours of racing on the 117-mile London orbital have been circulating
faster than the traffic since the motorway was finished in 1986
and we've poked around for evidence of the lap record for years.
Our call to Chad was the result of a series of messages passed
through an acquaintance of a former Met copper. Friend of a friend
of the filth, Chad would say.
He described his work as 'pharmaceuticals distribution' and his
friends, including ex-smokey bacon, play various roles in his
organisation. 'You don't want to know about my business,' Chad
told us. In four clandestine phone calls that's all we got.
Most of the time Chad wanted to talk about cars and high-speed
circumnavigation of the capital. He explained how the M25 allowed
entrepreneurs like him to extend their manor, or work someone
else's, and move around very quickly. 'There are 30 junctions
on the M25,' said Chad. 'Each one represents potential customers.'
He really wanted to tell us about the cars. Six cars make up his
posse: the 911, a Nissan Skyline, an Escort Cosworth, a Sapphire
4x4, a 5-series BMW and a big old Rover Vitesse. Stealth is important
so none of the cars is anything to look at; rasping intakes and
exhausts are out.
But each car has a £500 Valentine radar detector, hands-free
mobile phone and an ICE install to die for. The ICE plays host
to the outlaws' adopted band, Orbital. It's a bit obvious, naff
even, the way Chad latched onto the trippy techno music for the
name of the band. Now dreamy dance albums like Snivilisation and
In Sides are the soundtrack to his antics on the M25.
'We all wear Orbital stuff,' Chad revealed near the end of our
first phone call. 'A T-shirt or maybe a small badge. And all the
cars have a little Orbital sticker tucked away somewhere.' Hmm.
We spent a week scrutinising Porkers, Cossies, Beemers, Skylines
and old Rovers for Orbital logos. We didn't see any.
Chad said he wanted
to talk to Max Power but he also wanted to play games. The South
Mimms payphone wasn't answered until Friday on the second week.
The anonymous voice gave another London number where Chad kept
it short. 'I've had a busy week and one of the lads had a problem
with his motor,' he said. 'I like the magazine but I'm not sure
if I want to get into this now. Give me a couple of weeks.'
Two weeks later, when we'd decided Chad was a bit of a wanker,
he phoned us. 'Let's talk about the racing,' he prompted.
Okay, Chad. Let's. We asked him about his lap record.
'You're having a laugh, mate,' he said. 'If you tried to race
all the way round you'd never get off the road. They'd have all
the exits sealed tighter than a camel's arse in a sandstorm. I
might be a little bit crazy but I'm not that fuckin' crazy!'
We were pissed off. We'd waited a long time for this conversation
and we'd been drawn into Chad's web of intrigue. If he sensed
our disappointment he didn't show it and kicked off with an account
of their first ever race.
'It all started as a bit of a laugh,' he began. 'When we're moving
a lot of gear around we always send a couple of cars ahead to
check out the route.
'We keep in touch by phone and we've invented this kind of code
language for warning each other about unusual situations - anything
dodgy like police and familiar motors. Like rival ice cream vans
keep an eye out for each other - avoid confrontations and that
- we do the same... and we know a lot about our competition.
'It gets a bit fuckin' edgy sometimes and one night we'd had to
get out of Romford fast. The Skyline up on the motorway told us
there was a pig snoozing above the shoulder up ahead so we had
to stay cool.
'I was bricking it 'cos I was sure we'd been followed so I floored
it. Sometimes the cops are the least of our worries and we'd just
finished our last delivery so we were clean.
'Anyway, we were making ground on the front look-out and he was
staying cool 'cos of the cop. But he knew I'd kick his fuckin'
arse if he didn't wind it up a bit and suddenly I was on him.
We'd left the cop asleep so my mate in the Skyline pulls ahead
and the next thing you know is we've got a 911 and Skyline pushing
140 talking to each other on the blower!
'We laughed like fuck, man. It was all the tension from the drop
and that.'
We were shocked by this irresponsible behaviour and no mistake.
So does he make a habit of it now, we asked.
'It's a release, a bit of a laugh,' explained Chad. 'And you've
got to understand we're on the fuckin' top of our game. We don't
miss a fuckin' thing and the cars are sorted - okay, the Rover's
a bit rough but it's sound.
'We go out to play every night after work and now it nearly always
results in a dice. The bets are just a sideline thing, a couple
of the boys try to boost a night's earnings and every now and
then we let the Rover win. We're just letting out a bit of pressure,
you know, but it's not like some spotty little twats in clapped-out
hatches tearing past fuckin' Burger King.'
Steady on Chad, those are our mates you're dissin'. You're making
what you do sound acceptable, we suggested.
'It is acceptable,' he maintained. 'The filth wouldn't agree but
we've never been pulled.'
Never?
'Never. There was one night we was lucky. The quietest stretch
is heading south from the [Dartford] bridge and me and the lad
in the 5-series were moving stuff down to Weybridge - he had the
gear. The Escort was looking out for us up ahead and the Rover
was behind.
'A Volvo patrol car swooped up from Swanley and tucked in in front
of the Rover. He was moving fast and would have been on us if
I hadn't gunned it. We saw his blue lights come on just too late
to make the Farnborough turn-off.
'Man, I was pumped and the twin turbos were really singing, but
I stuck behind the Beemer all the way to the Sevenoaks interchange
- where it feels like you come off the M25 to stay on it.
'The BM went straight on and down into Sevenoaks, disappearing
into town like we'd agreed. I took the pig with me, getting too
close for comfort, and made that sharp curve on the slip road
on the fuckin' limit, man. The back was well out of shape and
I don't mind admittin' I'd broken a sweat.
'Once I was back on the main carriageway I wound it round to 150.
Everything snapped sharp: lights, the music, I could feel the
road through my arms. Adrenalin's the only fuckin' drug you need
and that's rich coming from me, pal.
'There was no sign of the cop so I flew into Clackett Lane Services
and sat tight for an hour. My boy in the Beemer was on his way
home and the Rover swept right past and back... saw nothing. Somebody
slipped up that night or they were never after us in the first
place. Who knows?
'But it'll happen, probably with the help of that helicopter.
In fact I fancy one of those bastards myself one day.'
Racing on Britain's most famous motorway carries incredible risks.
The gang improves its odds with fake plates fixed over the real
ones with Velcro strips. Stacked against them is the network of
closed-circuit television cameras monitored 24 hours a day by
police officers.
Police will deny any knowledge of a bunch of outlaw drivers nightly
flouting the speed limit for a modest wager. They're anxious to
see that such behaviour isn't glamourised. Too many impressionable
young kids out there might think it's clever.
But the same law enforcement agencies are making video footage
available to sensational TV shows locked in ratings wars.
The programmes are thinly disguised as warnings with harsh condemnation
from a po-faced presenter. Keep watching, and if you ever catch
a glimpse of an Orbital sticker on a car or driver in big, big
trouble, you'll know he had it coming.
* The 117-mile M25 was finished in 1986
at a cost of £1,000,000,000 (thousand million).
* Some sections see 200,000 vehicles a day.
* M25 gritting lorries spread 400 tonnes
of salt to rot your motor every winter.
* One old gimmer spent two days circling
the M25 looking for his daughter's home. A retired dustman slept
in hedges when he too became hopelessly lost.
* Police rescued an elderly woman cycling
the wrong way along the outside lane. She was holding her hat
on with one hand as oncoming vehicles dodged her.
* A couple spent their wedding night in
a coach with honeymoon suite, rocking it from side to side as
it whizzed round the M25.
© copyright emap national publications 1998
When Terence Donovan met
me for lunch a few weeks ago he was as happy and ebullient as
ever.
The great fashion photographer chose my food for me, ordered me
more beer than I needed and took our interview along his preferred
route. There was the occasional detour – ramble even –
but they were the thoughts and words of a man still obsessed with
creating pictures after more than 30 years of doing it.
Terence Donovan was never ordinary and no conversation with him ever could be. He told me he didn't like the way articles portrayed him as a chirpy Cockney and then he talked like one for two hours. He asked me not to print his swearing and then turned the air blue. He told me I have lovely teeth... three times.
Enough has been written about the big guy, the Guv'nor, since he died in November. This was his last interview and so the rest of the words are his:
"I'm interested in illustrating the upbeat things of life, I'm not riveted by the downbeat. I know a lot about the downbeat but it doesn't intrigue me to record it.
"I like the glisten. I know it's irrelevant but it's hopeful, quite harmless, quite cheerful.
"It's a nice time in my life, actually. I'm enjoying it and I'll tell you why: I'm not grinding away like I used to. I don't want to do that. There's a thing in the film industry called Tamar Productions - Take the Money And Run. You think, I'll do that because that'll pay the rent, but then it sticks to you like napalm. I'm quite careful what I get involved with. As a young man, in my diary you'd see four assignments a day. As I got older I learned that in order to do something well, you've got to really want to do it.
"Advertising is getting lazy. You see it, man, all this endless regeneration of old material, '60s music and old American cars going off into the desert. That's not the answer. I'm not saying you should cold-bloodedly set out to be original, and I'm not saying you don't absorb things osmotically, in the aesthetic sense. What I am saying is that you must engage your own brain and I don't think people do it enough.
"There's a lot of difference between an advertising photographer and a photographer. When I used to work for Elle magazine in France, the art director never told me what to do. You had to work it out for yourself. In Paris and there was Helmut Newton in one studio and Guy Bourdin in the other. They're photographers, man. They weren't nicking anything off of anybody. I watched Guy Bourdin and there's no more way I could take a photograph like Guy than fly.
"When I did my 900th interview about that Robert Palmer video Addicted to Love someone asked me where I got the idea from and I said, 'I did something rather odd... I thought of it!' It seems to be a rather old fashioned thing to do.
"I was speaking to The Association of Photographers and I told them to be careful with these digital images because they have a deadness to them. I was looking at an advertisement for a plate of salmon and I realised that there was about nine images joined up there. Well, I remember taking a picture of a plate of salmon for Aer Lingus on a lake in Connimara in the '60s and we just photographed it. And mine was actually a better shot because the background was slightly out of focus. They'd got everything razor sharp and a non-photographer can sense when something's wrong.
"Serious musicians like to hear their music played on LP as opposed to CD. Whoever's in charge of the show upstairs, he's got a wicked sense of humour because as they give it to you, the progress and new ideas, they take something away. You know what I mean?
"You can't stop technology, you don't want to stop technology. But if you get one of these advanced modern cameras and you're photographing a girl in a black suit against a black background you'd better switch everything off and get out the meter and take a reading. If you don't do that, old love, you're snookered because most of those guys that design cameras, one thing they never do is use them.
"I saw the prototype of an East German camera at Photokina years ago and I said, Have you tried to use this? Just wind ten films through it and you'll find your fingers bleeding. They changed the design.
"Amateur photographers have got a problem because they've got no reason to take a picture. They're kind of equipment junkies. When you look at a picture that Cartier-Bresson took on a 50mm...
"When I first started, I thought that if I took enough frames, I'd get a good picture. Photographs are taken with the brain, the camera records it, but it's a meta-physical process because what happens in an image is beyond what you see. And the problem with amateurs is that they're too busy with the technical side. It's the head that makes pictures and the cameras record the thought. You've got to be able to read the images.
"You have to make it look easy when you're photographing people; have a dialogue going. You can't hide behind your camera. When I was 15 I was shy, so I used to make myself go up to people to photograph them. I'd do anything that frightened me. And now I say to young photographers, 'Don't try and sneak pictures on a 100mm lens, get a 35 on and walk up to them.'
"I was taught by hard men, really tough. I was a blockmaker, making printing plates and it taught me the fundamentals of exposure. On any film shoot, in any situation, within reason, I'm never more than a stop out. I can look at anybody's face and say, 1/30 at 2.8. And if I am out, it will be a stop over, which is always the right way to be. And that was all from that training.
"I used to get up at eight o'clock, work in the studio from nine until seven at night, go out and have a bite, come back at nine, develop all the negatives of the day, contact them and go home at 1.30. That's how you learn how to do the job. You know what they say in the SAS, 'Train hard, fight easy'.
"Our society has become soft. You've got to get weaving and not expect society to look after you. I loathed going into the British army but I'm glad I did. There's never been a situation in my life that even got remotely near cracking me. When you've painted half a ton of coal white with a toothbrush and then painted it back black again, you're not too fussed about much.
"Photography is a militaristic
operation, you've got to be organised. Most people aren't organised.
"What you've got to understand about Bailey and me is, we
were fantastically hard working. Bailey and I never wanted to
be successful photographers. That wasn't the plot. We weren't
ambitious, ever. We just wanted to do it.
"My first darkroom was a cupboard and I couldn't afford a red light so I used to have a bit of cloth handy and the cloth used to catch fire. But by God I wanted to do it.
"You've got to try hard not to develop the vague notion you might be of some consequence. 'Cos if you manage that, you're free from the tyranny of it. You see that a million times, people that really think they've cracked it and then it comes slamming out of the woodwork at them. Judo teaches you that, some skinny little bloke you think, Oh, he's nothing, and the next thing you're lying on your back. It's much more to do with the philosophy of life than anything to do with photography.
"I've been very interested in religion all my life. I've mixed with the richest people on this planet and I know that real money brings no happiness at all if you're not buzzing.
"Don't do it if you want to be famous. As long as people leave college and they don't want to buy a car out of photography, or don't want to get a flat in Mayfair, if they just want to be photographers... If they have passion and if they have got something to say, they'll make it.
"When you're young, you go on assignment, somebody steams into your pictures and it tears your guts out, you know. And you defend them. I don't defend my work, never again. I hope you like it, I've tried hard. I've tried my best but if you don't like it...
"I've tried to keep my eyes and ears open in my life, be a bit receptive. That's why I go and photograph where all those kids are dancing. It's interesting. Too many people of my age are too locked off. You can look old, but you don't have to be old. Parkinson was 73 but he was not an old man, he was a wild man, sparky.
"Salgado, Irving Penn, Mapplethorpe was a wonderful photographer but probably he was a spectacular marketing job, aided hugely by death, Helmut Newton hasn't lost it.
"It's always been a tough job, Cecil Beaton was a tough old boy, Parkinson was a tough old boy, Eve Arnold's a tough woman. Not a job for somebody light on bottle, I'll tell you, photography. Not when you think of what can go wrong.
"I have the advantage of having a bit of mileage on the clock. You know at the end of the show it comes out fairly alright, otherwise you'd go crackers. If I slashed at my wrists with a razor blade at every image I've had ruined or nicked...
"We're not going to be around for ever and I don't know who will take over from us. I'm sure, as we speak, there is some bloke enrolling at some college in the north-east of England who's going to. Because we'll all go, we'll all be on the great stage in the sky at some point."
"Photography, for me, isn't art. It's specific. You can have things in photographs that are emotive, a crying child by a car crash or something, but that's not the photograph, that's the content that's emotive.
"Because I paint and take photographs, I think photography is a craft because it doesn't attack you. That's why I don't have many exhibitions. I think exhibitions are quite dull, personally. I don't know why. I like photographs. I like looking at them but how many times have you come out of an exhibition and gone Phew!?
"When old Avedon had that exhibition of stuff, you know, 15 foot high prints, well it was just graphics to me, and the weakness of graphics is it's studied. Whereas if you look at a painting by Lucien Freud, skilled as it is, there's a bit of mad vibrancy about it all. Or Bacon, insanity on the paper, but I love it because I don't know where it came from and it mystifies me."
"I gave a lecture at a camera club not too long ago and when I'm speaking somewhere at seven o'clock I turn up at six and then disappear. Then I come back at two minutes to seven to start. The place was filled with amateur photographers and I'd never seen a group so enthusiastic. Well, it turned out they'd seen me walk past the hall at six and thought I'd had a look at the place and thought, 'I'm not speaking there' and done a runner. No wonder they were pleased.
"Then few weeks later I was at the Royal College of Art and after I'd studied their work in the morning we had some lunch and then sat down to talk. And then a girl got up and I said, 'Where are you going?' And she said, 'To get coffee.' So I said, 'You've just had lunch.' And then the German next to me said, 'Zis isn't ze military now you know.' And so I said, 'And you can fuck off as well!'
"But do you see what that illustrates?"
© copyright emap apex publications 1996
if you have a use for this talent, e-mail martyn moore
martyn.moore@virgin.net
0468 261276
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