Conversation With A Egyptian Activist

...Do I drive like Egyptian? Like I’m crazy? Like a step in front of me is a one-hit death? Mashallah, (God has willed it) we speak collision. There is always smoke curling from our engines, see the Souk? You call it market? Our spices are the colours of eruption. That’s why Soldiers impose curfews from streets, and we keep our fires in, house parties held behind every door, these were nights of hashish and tipsy-talk, but my friend, no Champagne leaves our shelves with the military barb wiring our roads, you’d have to load your tongue with Arabic to skin scrape our red African revolution. Change is the slowest train you can catch in Egypt, we’ve lost blood and patience waiting for it...

Conversation With A Ugandan Carer

I won’t say much you’ll remember, you’re the poet, I’m the carer who says goodnight to dementia patients in nursing homes, making sure they’ve swallowed their medication, making sure I am giving smiles and getting them back before I turn out the lights. I am from Uganda, I like England because my dreams are different here, I mean that they are comfortable. I wake up younger if I think about Lucinda. She’s the Jamaican lady in a wheelchair, 79 years in her body, one leg cut off from diabetes but missing no happiness. She’s like a child when she sees me, enough watts in her face to light up any place. Every night she says “hello Africa Man!” and calls me “the happiest neighbour she’s ever had." The dementia tells her that it is 1960-something in Montego Bay and she is living with her father who is a butcher, that’s dementia, an illness with a cleaver. She asks when’s her father’s coming back, I say “soon” and she sits there looking soulful. One night she asked me if I’ve seen many oceans, I said that there aren’t any oceans in Uganda, just lakes and I never had the time to visit them; she says that there is always enough time in our lives to do what we must. 

Conversation With A Norwegian On A Mountain

Hei, er du nyter fjellet? Oh’ you English; I ask if you’re enjoying the mountains? It’s only three more hours to the top from here; I have my dreaming bag to sleep up there tonight, then another mountain tomorrow. The only thing that matters on a mountain is that you keep moving, remember me, seventy-two year old man who keeps moving. Ja, no pollution for the spirit where there are green and white waterfalls. I’m happy to find another person up here, I was just trying to figure out the worth of achieving something that no one will see. Sheep have been my best audience. You’ll remember me when you’re older though, especially if you can’t climb stairs by then. If you do get to see a forest like this, you’ll envy trees for making a place so beautiful just by existing together; you start to think like this when you outlive people you can only speak to in dreams. I don’t mean to talk sentiments, it’s just this air really opens you, makes me wonder how we breathe so closed up in our cities. Ja, must make movement, I want to be at the top so I can get into my dreaming bag, remember friends, stay adventurous.

Roads, Snow and grass.

By Water

Cloud Thumb

Lakes too

To read more conversations buy Shapes & Disfigurements from Amazon -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shapes-Disfigurements-Raymond-Antrobus/dp/1909136077/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375284761&sr=1-1

Conversation With A Woman Selling Strawberries At The Traffic Lights In Gothenburg

I'm currently in Sweden, Gothenburg for no other reason than being somewhere that isn't London.

Yesterday while wandering the streets I met a woman selling strawberries at the traffic lights, I had to talk to her, had to ask her something just to see how she thinks. 

She looked young, maybe late twenties, blonde shiny hair. I walked over, she was standing on the side walk holding a wooden crate of strawberries, they were so alive in the colour red I thought they might be breathing. 


"Hey!" I said, before even thinking what else I was going to say..."Hej!" she said back and smiled, "Jordgubbe?", I guessed this was Swedish for strawberry. I responded with the few Swedish words I know "ja" and "tack", which means "yes, thank you".

In English I asked her if she likes her job, she answered while staring at a family sitting in a yellow car, two children in the back, an old woman in the passenger seat and a man in a bright pink shirt smiling back at us, "in life" she said, "whatever you take pride in, make sure it is sweet" - she gave me a bag of strawberries and said "lycka till!" which is Swedish for "good luck".

Conversation With A South African Township Community Worker

When more churches start popping up in your community it’s a sign your area is getting poorer. All these new Christian and Catholic churches, you see them in the townships? Big fancy buildings towering over all the houses and township shacks, they are funded by the Americans my brew.  You see, the Americans are clinging desperately to their Christian and Catholic followers because it's their way of preserving their influence on the world. These churches always recruit from poorer, more vulnerable and uneducated people around the world. They pay the landowners, build the church and the church generates money by promising local people better lives and good fortunes for their contributions... it’s all part of the business. Have you ever met these travelling American's brew? How shocked they be when they realise how hated they are? – In America they thought themselves as the envy of the world, haha, America is just the name of a major corporation, a corporation that is only in business if they are in war. You could say that all countries have been primarily built on war or some kind of conflict - I mean, you're European right!? but I don't think right now there is a country in the world more dependent on war, death and famine than America... Now let's go get a Coke.

South Africa/ NHS/ Autumn Photography

I was packing for my trip to South Africa and decided not to pack any music, just basic clothes, camera and books. I realised a lot of my memories abroad involve me walking around strange places with headphones. I can’t tell you the sound of these places but it definitely isn’t soft rock or indie rap.


South Africa – Where, What & Why?

From November fifth I’ll be living and working in the outskirts of Cape Town in a place called Belthom. I’m going to be assisting teachers in a Primary School, using poetry to help teach English. I’ll also be working at The Woodside Special Care Centre working with orphans and children with disabilities.

One of the best things I’ve done with my life so far has been working with children in special needs camps in Ohio, USA, followed by road tripping across North America on my own. I met many people in different cities and suburbs, I felt how different states are like different countries, I understood how so many great people have come out of a country that represents freedom to its people and imperialism, slavery or Hollywood to the rest of the world.

I’ve been eager to experience something like this again and chose South Africa because of my own curiosities of the culture and political history. I’ve read and heard about the Dutch and British colonization, the Zulu wars, the spice trade, the Boer Wars, Apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom. I’ve met many white South Africans in London and listened to their rants about the inequity of blacks against whites and how the political transition from Apartheid processed too hastily. They’ve told me this has created new tensions between “black, white and coloured people”.

In many ways we should all change the way we think about Africa, its history began thousands of years before European invasion yet it seems to be where we all start with our understanding. Myself included. Why is this important you may ask? Well, we all came from Africa so we’d be more in touch with our origins as human beings. The exploitation of Africa has made many European Empires and has now helped make China perhaps the most powerful country in the new century.

On Race

I’m curious to see how people will respond to me in a country with such high (on-going) racial tensions. As someone of mixed heritage (Caribbean/British if you want the box) I feel I represent the togetherness of two very different cultures. The identity crises/confusion that comes with the mixed race experience is something inflicted by a culture that can’t get rid of its colour lines. People all over the world give you different labels (white, black, mixed race, bi-racial, coloured etc) so the confusion of other people is inflicted onto you.

I struggled with this throughout my school years but meeting other mixed race people and discussing the experience with them helped me to make sense of it. I now celebrate the ambiguity of my appearance and I want to invite the whole world to the party! 


Conversation With A Doctor

I went to the travel Clinic after the NHS told me I had to book six weeks in advance for free treatment. At the clinic I paid £75 for three injections to keep me protected in Africa (Hepatitis A, Typhoid Fever & Polio).

The doctor who gave me the jabs ranted to me about the NHS cuts and the new procedures that are being phased in.

I’ve been a doctor thirty years, so I’m glad I’m coming to the end of my career. It’s terrible now. The new doctors and GPs are being trained to prescribe the lowest costing medicine as opposed to the most effective, it’s a disgrace. You’re my eleventh patient today, you see more people travelling from the UK are getting Malaria and Yellow Fever because the dangers aren’t emphasised enough and people are inconvenienced in getting treated…

Five minutes after he’d injected my upper left arm I passed out in the middle of this conversation. My vision went a fuzzy pale grey then completely black. I came though and I was on the floor with the doctor’s panic stricken face over me. I had no idea what happened. It was like when you skip a scene on a DVD and you know you’ve missed something so you ask someone to fill you in.

Me - Woah. What happened?

Doctor - You passed out buddy; I can feel you’re burning up! I’ll get you water. NURSE!

I found out later that because I have low blood pressure I should always be laying down when receiving injections.

Autumn Photography (Shadow Experiments)

In the UK the season is changing from Autumn into Winter. South Africa is coming into its summer so that's another reason for me to to jet pack. For you people staying put there is beauty in the cold seasons. The first picture below was taken by myself in London Fields on a late monday afternoon and the picture below that was taken on Tottenham Court Road one cold November night.

Farewell London.