• I am in Madrid, in the Museo del Prado, standing in front of The Garden of Earthly Delights, the three panel painting by Hieronymus Bosch. It is very busy, so there’s not only a crowd gathered in front of it but also a queue to join the back of the mob. It operates on a kind of one-in-one-out type situation with one person moving forward when someone on the front row steps aside. After not too long a wait, I get to the front row and decide to really stay a while and stare. It’s an intricate painting and you have to really look, and look, and look, to take it all in. A woman on my immediate left has the same idea, outstaying her welcome just like me. We stand besides each other and scan the canvases leisurely, playing the role not just of visitors but of appreciators, studious and dedicated to our eyes-peeled job. I look periodically over at her and like me she cannot help but grin the whole time. It is mind boggling to consider that this painting was created somewhere around the year 1500, and seeing it in the flesh, to scale, rather than as a digital reproduction on a computer screen, reveals it as a truly insane thing to behold. It is beautiful and artful, but it is also startlingly modern and very, very weird. A queue forms a queue and a crowd generates a crowd, so the painting kind of sustains its own interest on account of its popularity suggesting a significance within this enormous collection and museum. It’s a different thing to gaze in solitude at an artwork than it is to stand shoulder to shoulder with a mass of bodies competing for its glow. I wonder what thoughts everyone else who is standing in a line scanning this thing is having, while also trying to concentrate on just looking at it, knowing I may never see anything quite like this again.

• I am at Cafe OTO seeing Still House Plants play. The singer in the band works behind the bar of the venue so it’s a home crowd of sorts. Rather than playing on a stage facing the audience, they have set up their instruments in the middle of the room, an arrangement I learn is referred to as being “in the round.” The drummer is to my left with his back to me, and the guitarist and singer are on my right, facing towards me. I’m on the edge of the circular mass, peering in. They are an eccentric band and each of the three times I have seen them perform it has been different. This time is the most intimate, in part because of how close the audience is the to performers, but also because there is a sense that everyone is well aware of who they are seeing, familiar with their material, and very invested in seeing them play to the best of their ability among close friends and strangers who wish them well. It feels less like a gig than a birthday party, or at least something like the 1990s emo house shows I’ve seen photographs of where everyone is crammed together in someone’s basement somewhere in the American midwest. It is clammy and sweaty and we are all rocking and rolling, twitchy weirdos all together for this momentary swell. It is still a world away from a proper mosh pit but much less stuffy than is usual for this venue. The band look very happy. They play their instruments very well.

  

• I am at as many Arsenal games as I can get tickets for on the fan exchange. In the game against Brentford, I’m in the North Bank, standing with the season ticket holders low down and near the pitch, directly behind the goal. They are friendly enough but seem, understandably, slightly suspicious of me. It is the most atmospheric and most serious section I’ve ever been in. I like it a lot, and I feel, more than I ever have here, properly part of something, participant as well as spectator, truly involved. Everyone seems to have known each other for decades, if not centuries. The chants are loud and constant. And there are a lot of jokes and analyses. At one point, one man notes to the others repeatedly that he had told Piero Hincapié that he “needed to watch number eight on that corner.” He seems to believe that there is a genuine communion between us and the players, and that we, as much as Mikel Arteta, are the managers of this team. From the other end, the blur of ant figures massed opposite sing “We’re the Clock End, the Clock End, the Clock End of Highbury,” speaking as one. We sing back. “We’re the North Bank, the North Bank, the North Bank of Highbury.” This is a call-and-response song that dates back to the Highbury days. It’s totally primal to hear that many voices in unison singing the same thing. All the hairs on my neck stand on end.

• I am at the Carabao Cup match against Brighton. Dad and I get two seats by the corner flag, at the point closest to the travelling away fans. There is a bit of back-and-forth between us and them, but nothing too testy. It’s a family section and around us are many other fathers and sons, maybe at their very first games together. Arsenal score and the jeers begin. Shouts and taunts and middle fingers being wound up and down. A father and son, largely quiet until now, erupt into displays of gestural aggression towards the visitors. The dad sings and points his fingers towards them, screwing up his face with vengeful pride. The son, barely seven-years-old, stands up on his chair and throws up the wanker sign at the forlorn away fans. His face is crumpled and wrathful and he is relishing it all. He looks to his dad for recognition. You’re the man now dawg, his dad’s approving expression seems to imply. To some this might be considered an ugly scene but it isn’t to me. It’s a great day out and a beautiful connection. It’s fun and games.

• I am at the Wolves game, only a few days ago, sat by the half way line, in an area that is disappointingly much more sedate. I make friends with the man next to me, a twenty-two-year-old who works in a leisure centre in Clapham. He's from South London and his whole family are Chelsea, but he has always been Arsenal, he says. We chat and sing songs through the game, exchanging jokes and sharing a rising anxiety about the outcome of the match. In a game that was supposed to be a foregone conclusion, Arsenal score and then concede quickly after, throwing the whole season into doubt. In the last minute of the game Arsenal get the winner. We scream and shout and jump up and down hugging, concluding jokes we had been workshopping in anticipation of such a climactic event. It’s a temporary friendship of a kind that can only happen in public space. I’m me and I’m not me. He is just some guy but we have this one big known commonality and then under it a number of other unspoken subcultural ones that create a shared language. He takes my name and number and says “I’ll text you about Arsenal bro,” before heading southbound home.

PERSONAL

Since the start of year, I have been trying to shoot one roll of film per month on the little Canon point and shoot I have. I haven’t quite managed that frequency, but have come somewhere close. Not trying to capture anything particularly artful but more just build a picture of the everyday life. It’s always tricky to brave pointing the camera in people’s faces but I do think it is worth the irritation it takes. Maybe others do not agree. The most recent two rolls are in this post, with stray images from Lisbon, Berlin, Madrid, and London.