Journal extracts and pinhole photographs © Kayla Parker 1997

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BUG HEAD Thursday 28th August

Got some bug, brain fever. Taste of metal, my head vibrates. Queasy guts and nausea, sensitive to stimuli. Bright flashing colours at night when the light goes out, then driving into an endless cavern of fluorescent vibrating green. Two hours of logging is my limit each day, doing any activity (including thinking) gives me a headache. Head's cracking, dizzy and disorientated.
Drift through the stormy days, waves of hail stones and gales. Penwith moor, the darkside and sunny side of the stones. Whales in a sea of heather. A round dark eye opens in each crusty stone, above the surface of rippling grass. If I move my head quick I see ghost images; I smell smells that aren't there. Dive from ancient granite into a pool of deep black water. I have to go to bed.

Super 8 frame - Penwith

VIBRATIONS Friday 29th August

Felt a bit better this morning, but now I've overdone it and my whole body's oscillating. Ginny came round at lunchtime to drop off the Wild Westcountry Beta tapes. Didn't want coffee, but stayed for a roll-up. Turns out she used to go out with Alnoor Dewshi years ago in Bristol. Stu at the Dartmouth Regatta on a long, rainy day for Westcountry. Rushed in at 9 and puked up within 30 seconds. I brought all the gear in from the car, the mixer and mics all soaking wet.

MOOD CHANGE Sunday 31st August

I wake to church bells and slowly come to. Stu makes tea, then slopes off to the computer. I switch on the radio for the Archers. It's quarter past ten, a fuzzy BBC man's voice says 'Paris...car...Diana'. I shout out 'The Archers isn't on because Princess Diana has been killed in a car crash!'. The words don't mean anything, they're just words. Paris seems very distant. I wonder if she's committed suicide. Stu switches on the TV and we see a stunned Tony Blair, wringing his hands and speaking to the cameras before going into church.
People come to lay bouquets outside Buckingham Palace. The crowd shouts at Palace officials when they try to clear the flowers away from the gates. Throughout the day the flowers grow, outside Kensington Palace too. A black woman walks to and fro past a royal guardsman at attention. She ululates and beats her chest at each step. Some people are in tears, others light candles and pray.
A grey moist day, the end of Summer. In the backyard flowers bloom as drizzle falls. Yesterday's morning glory have sucked their petals into pink puckered anuses, today's are bruised mauve and blue trumpets. Everywhere's very quiet. In the afternoon and evening I select and film colour pinhole photos on the EOS. The leaping ghost girl, spinning Mên-an-Tol, stalked through wild grass, bright flowers against a deep blue sky, zooming into views through the holes, the sun a dazzling star in a black sky, the green circle of Plymbridge woods, and whirling night lights.

DIGITAL Wednesday 3rd September

On Radio 1 news: people are queueing for 9 hours to get into St James's Palace to write their condolences. Number of books increased to 43. Volcano island of Montserrat wants to name its port Diana. Three late nights in a row editing the film. I find it tiring not being able to touch anything, but it's less of a torture than video editing.
Mên-an-Tol and Tolvan holey stones I associate with fun and enjoyment. They're National Monuments, ancient stone artifacts, but function as kids' playthings - for clambering through and hiding behind. I like this juxtaposition of life and death, separated by thousands of years. The Penwith row are darker, secret, and more brooding; the location more desolate and remote. The three stones are screwed tightly into the earth, their holes too small to pass more than a hand through. All the stones have perfect circular holes.

Super 8 frame - Mên-an-Tol

Meet Lesley at the Arts Centre at one. A queue waits outside St Andrew's Church in the drizzle to sign the book for Diana. After tea and fags, we stride out into the wind and rain down to the Barbican. The quay is deserted. We peer through the window of Westward Bound, the bondage shop, not daring to go inside in our un-chic wet coats. A mannequin wears an attractive blue rubber nun's head dress. The stilettos on display are razor sharp. On the cobbles under a drain pipe is a still life: a squeezed fruity herbal tea bag, surrounded by little tufts of emerald moss carried down by the rain.
Huge bunches of artificial flowers bloom in the Dartington glass house. For sale: plastic-wrapped pot pourri in baskets, miniature Magic Towels, scented candles in the shape of ammonites. There are bowls of marbles, plaster fruit, ships in bottles, a deck chair. Tourist fodder. In the annexe at the far end, we watch as two blokes in aprons fiddle with globules of molten red glass in front of the furnaces.
After a toasted cheese sandwich in Prete's we visit Rod's Books and buy a matching second hand pair of the Observer book of Astronomy by Patrick Moore for four quid. In the Antique Market I search in a box marked Cornwall for old postcards of holey stones. The first floor of the old fish warehouse is awash with instrumental light music versions of Simon and Garfunkel classics. I buy four Rough Seas and some Greetings From Plymouth.
We walk around to the Hoe in a gale. The rigging on the moored boats rattles and whines. Low clouds drift across Jennycliff and Mount Edgcumbe, breakers crash over the Breakwater. The tattered flag at half-mast above the citadel whip-cracks in the wind. We retire to the new tea rooms on top of the Hoe for Earl Grey. In the ornamental garden is a topiary man riding a bicycle, (his back is furred with long green leaves - he needs a trim), a windmill and a bear sitting upright.

NEW MOON Sunday 7th September

Thursday, people gather outside Westminster Abbey. They intend to camp out for two nights, before the funeral on Saturday. Meanwhile life, and death continues. A nail bomb attack in the centre of Jerusalem. A survivor reports "a leg lying on the floor, without a body". On the TV news on Friday evening, a boy on the train from Plymouth to Paddington was asked what he thought he would see at Diana's funeral. He said 'Lots of flowers. And lots of tissues on the ground, with tears on them'. A well-wisher sends us an e-mail alert, warning of a new virus on the loose. Symptoms include excessive sentimentality and suspension of all rational thought. A wall of bouquets outside St Andrew's Church. The Arts Centre has cancelled the opening night and all screenings of Crash.

We create an ingenious soundtrack for Project from a handful of sounds: the windfarm, a fragment of guitar, winding up the works from a musical box, the wooden owl hoot, a sine wave, and me popping my mouth.

An early Autumn heat builds up all morning, then the sun cuts through the clouds in the afternoon. I walk into town down Armada Way, following white butterflies along the ornamental watercourse. Kids are roller-blading on the Sally Army steps, pigeons sit on the grass and forage in the dried-up stream. Dingles is open and all the flags outside fly at half-mast. Outside St Andrew's church people linger by the flowers, reading the messages. Down the Barbican I enter the pannier market, and wander round the second-hand booths in the mouldy gloom. I buy a 1956 American Cinematograph Hand Book and Reference Guide for one pound. A coffee in Prete's as I read the Care and Handling of Film in the Tropics, and in the Arctic. In the Tropics 'wrap several layers of cheesecloth about the wrists and forehead to absorb perspiration when handling film in hot darkrooms.' In the Arctic 'keep the metal eyepiece of your camera covered with cloth, because if your eye comes in contact with the metal eyepiece you are liable to leave a portion of skin from your face there.' Two Yankee tourists in shorts eat a Prete's hot dog and drink a carton of coke and leave, before I've had time to have my first sip of coffee. In Prete's, the hot frothy sweetish milk drink they make from a cappuccino machine doesn't taste of coffee at all.

I join the legion of the lost on Southside Street. Tourists shuffle along the pink marble pavements, snaking in and out of the knick-knack and gift shops. Fluorescent joke maggots, the crew of the starship Enterprise as glow-in-the-dark stickers, packets of Worry Stones ("rub your cares away"), life-like leaping rubber frogs. I stride up round Madeira Road past all the ice cream vans to the seafront. The flag on the citadel has now been raised to the top of the pole. Boys in baggy shorts and trainers jump off the diving board into the sea, a cormorant fishes by the concrete beach. It's a calm low tide, the Sound is rippled into silver scales like a sheet of snakeskin. There are day-glow orange Rodenticide warnings all along the foreshore and through West Hoe: all pets to be kept under control because of rat poison. I pass a family from Manchester who are foraging in the bushes for a "big mouse" they saw. Toddlers swarm all over the pleasure park on Pier Street, crashing the miniature cars and bikes around the race track, playing crazy golf, and leaping onto the trampolines.

On top of the Hoe by Eliott Terrace is a new granite menhir, a commemorative gift from Norway, Sweden and Iceland: 997 to 1997, a millenium since the first Viking raids. The stone is inscribed with red runes and a longship, and propped up on the grass with slabs of wood, protected by metal crash barriers. I sit on the balcony above the memorial garden on my sunset bench, (the original has now been replaced by a new one). I can see the Eddystone clearly on the horizon. An old Plymouth buffer on the next bench gives a potted history of the area to a silver-haired American couple on a coach tour. The flags of all the EU countries are flying today, the Union flag at half-mast. On the way home I detour through the war memorial to visit my stone soldier in his stone duffel coat. There are pots of chrysanthemums and geraniums, a home-made bouquet and a stem of artificial white lilies, laid out below the curved bronze wall of names. Walking past the station I notice the cabs have shreds of black ribbon tied onto their aerials.

Tonight the moon can be seen, a slice of golden melon just above the rooftops after eight. Today is the 21st day of teetotalitarianism.

AUTUMN Wednesday 10th September

A chill in the air morning and evening, blazing yellow sun inbetween. Light bouncing around everywhere, violet blue shadows and golden reflections. Sky, glazed bright blue with cracks of white cloud. The garden's starting to fade down now. Leaves yellow and fruit ripens as sap begins to fall. Lots of flowers still, but the growing heart's beating more slowly each day.

TWO PEAS Friday 12th September

4.45am. Second night of disturbed sleep. Wednesday night woke to a brief period of lucidity; last night prolonged and intricate dreams of escape and pursuit, evading capture by the authorities. I guessed the time when I woke - 2.30. Still awake now so I've got up. As I creep downstairs, matey next door is getting ready to go to bed, a blobby pinky brown shape lit up against his bathroom window as he has a wash. Odd sensation, being awake in the night, yet being completely straight. On Eastenders, Joe says 'Actually we prefer pop to wine,' as ghastly old lech Tony's mum tries to get him pissed during dinner.

Off to Cann House in Plymbridge Woods to hunt the bottom of a radio mic, lost while recording Gus the forest warden yesterday. Go along the bike track for a mile, then turn off by the first viaduct up through the trees to the Victorian quarrymaster's house. Two black yew trees tower over the old front door. I walk through the ruined slate building, going into all the rooms and scanning the carpet of cinquefoil for a small piece of black plastic. Near the back door yellow flowers of St John's Wort glow among the nettle beds. It's a really peaceful spot, just the clank of earth-moving machines on a distant hillside, and occasional planes above the trees, flying to and from Roborough airport. Three huge red admirals with a wing span of four inches hang upside down on mauve buddleia spikes, and flutter their skirts in the sun. A tall bone-dead tree rises from the old garden, a barkless beech skeleton surrounded by lantern bushes. I scour the house rubbish dump and find fragments of patterned china and part of an oyster shell. Tiny white antlers stick out of the moss and leaf litter: white coral fungus (clavulina cristata). The tips are firm like gristle when I touch them.

We have to copy the pinhole photos to transparencies so I can post off a bumper package of tapes and pics to Malene at the London Film Makers' Co-op. Just the accounts to type up then Project is all done. I make cheese and vegetable pasties for tea.

PORTRAIT Saturday 13th September

Arts Centre for lunch, to pick up START tapes from Julie, off to Fernando in Buenos Aires on Monday, and to catch up on some gossip. Frank sits in the armchair under the painting of Chinese peasants in his Chinese peasant clothes. He's printed up the first two pinhole lith negs from his 35mm canister cameras. Damaris looks beautiful, all dark Victorian blots and stains with little scrabbly marks on the surface: a portrait of George Elliot with her vacuum cleaner in the background.

TRAVELLING Sunday 14th September

Use up the rest of the film in the pinhole camera on the Hoe. We eat tasty toasted sandwiches outside the tearoom. Sparrows line up on the hedge next to us and leap onto the floral border, burrowing into the dirt for a dust bath between the flowers. In the garden, spot a jaunty topiary whale, pruned mid-splash in a flowerbed.

XP2 Tuesday 15th September

Sunny afternoon today so we go to Plymbridge Woods for a picnic. Set up camp near the bend in the river where we filmed the leaves and light pools. I load the pinhole camera with funky XP2, b&w film which is processed as colour. Ideal for lazy people like me who can't be arsed to go into a darkroom. Shoot 5 time-lapse shots across the river and eat home-made sandwiches. Stu filming in the shallows with the disposable camera I gave him for last year's birthday, and the Eumig Nautica. He sees an eel, but it hides under a stone and won't come back out. A kingfisher flashes past as I'm taking a picture of elderberries so I don't see it.

After sunset, lug Betacam and heavy wooden tripod to the top of Central Park. It's the last lunar eclipse for two years. Stand around on the grass for an hour as the sky fades from deep red slashes to dull purple. Further down the hill, a twilight training session for about forty boys, who run about on the grass until it's too dark to see the ball. They are watched by two excited girls on push-bikes. Bell ringing practice at St Andrews church, trains arrive and depart in the station below.

We stare at the eastern horizon above Mutley Plain waiting for something to happen. Eventually a dim grey circle with a slight orange tinge appears. Too much low cloud for a clear view, or to get anything decent recorded. A rim of white shows, then a yellow rind grows from the bottom left edge. By nine the full moon is Daz blue-white and wearing a jaunty black scull cap.

FIRESTONE Thursday 18 September

Get a take-away coffee from Devil's Point kiosk just before it shuts. On the shelf are boxes of Tunnock's milk chocolate tea-cakes "made with the finest milk chocolate". We climb down to the beach with our polystyrene cups and sit on the concrete ramp. The sea slides over the swimming pool walls, turquoise green water over dark blond sand. Kath Field and Ruby, and a couple of golden children are paddling in the sunset. The last swim of the year. A few trawlers plough across the Sound, sea fog rising as the high tide ripples in. It's the Lux party in London tonight. 250 miles from here Project is being shown for the first time.

 

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