we drink a lot of guinness, smoke some very nice mellow weed, ian roache my friend from my photographic years and i are filling in gaps for one another. it's such a strange feeling to meet some one i was close with, the closest thing i had to a friend during that time and after 28 years connect up.
ian i love you man, you travelled a long strange journey but you found yourself and the girl, i can't explain how happy i am for you. we were really good friends and my terrible mind had forgotten our time together, massive blank spots, massive areas where i just had no memory were filled in last night as we wandered through the past.
we were such good friends that when we were hauled up at the head masters office they said to me, if i didn't turn up regularly they would chuck ian out. we were close ian like brothers.
we remembered together, with ian doing most of the work...

a day we had on assignment, in oxford supposedly capturing the town but we found this amazing pub called the 'oranges and lemons' with an amazing jukebox filled with obscure punk songs and ian took a photograph of me which he kept, and it the perfect document to oxford. me under a punk poster with a beer at the table, half drunk and gazing up at the ceiling while every one else took pictures of bridges and buildings we captured a time and a moment. cartier bresson.

a time when we went to our microfilm course and the lecturer said to us as he held aloft a microfilm fishe, 'this is the future.'
i tell ian that is the only memory of collage i have, but it is all seeping in now, gaps being filled.


ian told me how we found a secret place, a stream like winnee the pooh and piglets spot we kept it a secret although a mutual friend sara always pestered us to find out where it was. but we kept it a secret. it was not really a brook or stream more like a polluted drain but we raced sticks along it.

ian has photo's of me that are just incredible, i look exactly like jake looks now.
it is time travel.

we spoke about many drunken nights, watching fights in pubs, one where some one got slashed up really bad and then the attacker came after me, apparently we both fled as he chased us with his knife.
one when i pulled ian off some one he was punching, screaming, 'stop, you will kill him.'
yeah blood was spilt in them days to, london always had this side, ugly and brutal. i recalled someone pulling a knife out in the darkroom on sara and how ian and i protected her from our psychotic peer. we recalled bands we saw, girls we chased, crazy nights escaping arrests and beatings.

but the thing that we enjoyed most, the thing we both were amazed at was how true to ourselves we remained, we have changed and travelled far, we have experienced all that one can except war, we both had a desire as photographers to photograph war, and here we are half way through life, still the same really, smoking spliffs and drinking guinness laughing at ourselves and being free.

ian man i don't have many friends but you are one of them, i am so sorry i forgot about everything, i feel so stupid but as it all came flooding back i knew we shared a really special period together and im very grateful for the fact we came full cycle. onwards brother.