Following on from my previous entry, I disembarked from my train and prepared for some photography. I decided I could spare about half an hour and took a series of very disappointing photographs of the architecture. The light in there is a bit weird and my camera is only a compact digital, the flash is just not enough for long shots in unevenly lit buildings. I think I’d need a DSLR to get some photos worthy of the architecture at St. Pancras.

I am aware that the police in London have been unfairly targeting photographers recently, I’ve seen numerous reports of anyone taking photos being accused of being a terrorist and told to stop. So, I went out for my photography session in St. Pancras (which is an international railway station for those unaware, it has customs, security and such things for the trains from Paris and Brussels and other European destinations as well as to Nottingham) ready for a fight.

The only photographs worth showing are those of the statues, commissioned for the renovations and only a few years old currently.

I love the pose that Martin Jennings chose for this portrait sculpture of Sir John Betjeman, a poet that many British people have a great deal of affection for, and who was an enthusiastic admirer of St. Pancras station.

It was at this point the thing I had been mentally preparing myself for happened, I went to shoot from a different angle and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a policeman looking at me. “Aha, here we go…”, I thought to myself as I deliberately continued, pretending to have not seen him.

I caught another glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, approaching and taking something out of his pocket. I started running through my arguments in my head, and prepared to defend my camera with my life. There is no way I was going let anything I had taken be deleted or be stopped from doing an entirely reasonable thing, taking photographs of a beautifully renovated public building and the art that was commissioned for it.

The policeman spoke, I paraphrase because of my shoddy memory, “Hi, let me show you something, if you come around this side”, he gestured, “it is a really good angle with the clock above, especially at night. Here, look at this photo I took last night.”, he showed me the iPhone he had taken out of his pocket. I agreed that it looked really good and thanked him and he went back to his job of being a policeman in a building.

This put me in a fantastic mood for the entire day, I am usually disturbingly optimistic, much to the amusement of my friends. “No, give Gordon Brown a chance. He might be really good at being Prime Minister. Everything might change, things could get better!”, I once suggested in the weeks before he became Prime Minister. Later that day I also wondered out loud to Patrick whether the Hammersmith Apollo might sell better beer now that it is sponsored by HMV rather than Carling. What happened is that they just overcharge for a plastic glass of Carlsberg instead of Carling. I honestly entertained the notion that they might have a range of nice beers and ales now.

So, when I am being pessimistic and expecting the worst I absolutely love being proved wrong.

Paul Day’s Meeting Place is a spectacular and imposing work, more of a portrait of all the people over the decades who have used the station, especially lovers who met under the clock, it being a meeting place from the days before everyone was contactable no matter where they are. Mobile phones have reduced the meaning of this work but it is perhaps because of this that it should be there, as a celebration of generations of people greeting or waving off a loved one.

Meeting Place stands as a tribute to the people who have begun and ended journeys there.

I also took some photographs of parts of the frieze, which extends around the base of Meeting Place, for no other reason than particularly liking a lot of it. This woman with a book, especially.

I would love to write about Meeting Place for my Open University course this year, I think it would be very interesting to plan and write my independent assignment on, but there is one rather important reason that this is unlikely to happen, my course is called Art of the Twentieth Century and this statue is from 2007.

After a while I decided I had better go and check in to my hotel and head down to Leicester Square to meet Patrick for coffee and sushi before the gig.