On existing

31 Mar, 2026

To Zeeland last night for an appointment with the oncologist with M. later today. It was a long drive down, as usual, but it was quiet on the roads so the whole trip took just short of two hours. On the way down I was listening - as I always do on these trips - to The Rest Is History, this one about the rise, fall, rise, fall, and final rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan during it's three phases of existence. Interesting stuff that's still very relevant today given everything happening in the US, and worldwide.

Anyway, the reason I want to talk to you ...

I stumbled across a Facebook group called 'Memories Of Shops Now Gone - Aberdeen, Scotland' which, as the title suggests is dedicated to pictures of shops and other places in Aberdeen, the town where I grew up, the town I consider home.

Nostalgia is a powerful opiate, and without realising I doom-scrolled for about an hour or so through pictures of streets and times familiar to me. There's a lot from before I was born, but even then the places are still recognisable. A different time, different era when shops were full, the high street was rammed with people, and shopping meant you actually had to go somewhere, to interact and be with people.

I mean, I know that's still the case nowadays but not in the way it was then.

But the one thing I kept thinking about these photos is that, for the ones taken between 1977 and 1998, when I left for Ireland, is that I am in these photos. I existed there, in that time. Do you know what I mean?

Take this image, for example.

Taken at the crossing where the Upperkirkgate becomes Schoolhill. On the left, the entrance to the St Nicholas Centre, where I used to work at Our Price Video, and on the right, the entrance to the Bon Accord Centre. Further on up the road is, was, it's long gone, the RGIT Student Union, and beyond that, on Skene Street, Her Majesties Theatre, and the Central Library. Places I used to frequent on a weekly basis.

This picture was taken sometime around 1990. The Wimpy on the corner was later replaced by a Burger King; it's now a branch of The Bank of Scotland. Back then I was still at college, in my second year of a Computer Science degree that I would never finish, single, living at home on Great Western Road where my parents ran a B&B. I had lots of friends, a decent social life, had my guitars (one of which I still own); photography would come later. Halcyon days, you might say, the long hot summer of youth.

Anyway, the reason why I mention all this is that, without any doubt, I existed in that place, and that time.

And whenever I look at these photographs I know that somewhere, I am too.

Perhaps I'm just coming around the corner, or about to walk out of that Wimpy. Or maybe I am walking down the Schoolhill beyond, just out of sight of the camera; perhaps I am in that car waiting at the lights, or at the window there, on the top floor on the right.

You might not see me, but I am there, I exist, somewhere in that photograph.

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#life