Category Archives: Viewpoint

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Moving to planet No Phone

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I did not plan to move, but suddenly I found myself there – stranded on planet No Phone.

The day was always going to be hectic but we hadn’t allowed for the sudden pause in the middle of it. That was what caught us off guard. We were in the innocent process of changing venues when a little Italian restaurant crossed our path. It had photographs of Sofia Loren and Totò, and a menu that said all the right things. So in we crept to share a swift, delicious bruschetta and pere con speck e gorgonzola. Then we left, picking up a takeaway coffee from next door, and some chocolate from a shop on a street corner a little further on.

We began to miss the mobile at the end of the long drive that followed. The omens did not feel good. We searched everywhere. We called it. We pleaded with it. Blood pressures soared. Then sank. Then turned to desperate calm as we tried a few memory games to try and track the phone. Finally we agreed we’d lost it, and started to call the places we’d been. The results were not encouraging. Not everybody answered, and those that did had no clue where the mobile might be. With no tracking switched on, our hopes sank. Then as the dark crept around us we rang it one more time … and it answered.

Discovered on stepping-stone number three. All safe. Hadn’t missed us, and said it was happy to be collected tomorrow. Phew.

A little more time to relax, and watch planet Phone go scrolling by.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Thinking about architecture

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about buildings, thanks to a programme I heard discussing the idea that architecture has lost its soul.

The issue made me take a closer look at this sculpture near St Mary’s Axe in the City in London. From a distance it looks like a cartoon reproduction of an old building, planted deliberately amongst the new skyscrapers in the area.

The sight of this coloured version, so different yet so familiar, balancing awkwardly on its pedestals, has cheered me up whenever I’ve seen it. I suppose I might be responding to its soul, and that, according to the plaque beside it, is what the artist wants us to do. The title of the piece is The Granary and its creator, Jesse Pollock, is from Kent, where old granary stores can still be found. With this version Pollock is asking us to recognise that although it looks rosy, its battered profile is to give an idea of how tough its life is, facing one crisis after the next.

“… The Granary speaks as much to a need to overcome these crises as it does to the vexed rhetoric that underpins established visions of the nation, its heritage and our place within it.”

Reading these words has added another layer to my looking. From now on I shall think of it as the battered red heart powering the steely-faced, glassy-eyed buildings that surround it, yet do not notice it.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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These dahlias aren’t giving up

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It’s the end of another week – one that the news has given many faces.

There’s the one scarred by savagery and revenge. Another alive with sport, and hearts delivered to win. A third, struggling against the odds – work hassles, money problems, the weather, the news. And a fourth outside, restless with energy as the seasons change.

At times as I scan across other lives, screen time racing me between them, it feels as if the whole world is shifting. But when I look up I see the little things are still there, holding everything in place, unbothered by our madness, our excitements, or the climate tilting this way or that. Babies are still smiling, dogs leaping with happiness, and artists filling the world with colour. So is Nature.

Take these flowers, seen when the rain poured over Scotland. There were only a few of them in the vase, but there they were on a window ledge, unperturbed, taking a bow in all their finery. Perhaps that’s the way to do it.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023