life in England in the current year
Photographs by Frank.
Queues outside a supermarket in Brighton with Big Issue seller. The smell from a homeless person in a doorway of a closed shop across the street was unbelieveable. I really envied the people wearing their facemasks at that moment.
Many young people are currently under-occupied with universities and colleges still closed or working from home, and music venues and nightclubs being shut down due to Corona Virus.
Facemasked employees welcome back punters at Lakeside shopping centre. Mostly good citizens wearing their muzzles. At least they have a choice, unlike the McDonalds greeter checking people’s temperatures, who presumably has no choice but to wear one if he doesn’t want to lose his job.
Symbolic art, by Lakeside shopping centre. “The World Turned Upside Down”. Co-incidence, or mentally preparing people for what is to come?
Facemask machine, Lakeside shopping centre. The “New Normal”. Appropriately, it is “out of order” when I visited.
More corporate art, Lakeside shopping centre. Society is shaped like a pyramid. The people at the top don’t seem particularly affected by the holes apparent in the structure beneath…
Sign outside a shop on the south coast shaming those who cannot wear a facemask, or refuse to conform to doing so.
Those who are unable are given lanyards with yellow flowers to wear, like the yellow stars Jews were made to wear in periods of the Middle Ages and in Nazi Germany.
(click for reference)
With nowhere to go out to, young people turn to other means of having fun like late night “cruises” in modified cars or illegal raves.
While others stay home and watch streaming media or play online games, sports viewing figures are down – perhaps due to controversy over many prominent figures endorsement of the self-described “Marxist” Black Lives Matter organisation. (link reference)
Extinction Rebellion poster on a pillar in Ipswich. The radical environmental group’s rhetoric appears pasted on billboards in many towns by activists, they are well funded and embedded in academia, and the group has organised many events attempting to disrupt the lives of ordinary people in order to broadcast their message. Like flagellants in medieval times they forecast impending doom and warn a “sinful” society to repent their ways, but offer few practical solutions for real social change.
Predictive programming? Pop culture suddenly begins to look different, and innocent things become sinister, in the light of events currently unfolding.
“Mortal Engines” was, co-incidentally, filmed in New Zealand which, along with Australia, has had some of the most extreme lock-down measures due to fears over the spread of the Wuhan-originated COVID-19 outbreak.
Francis Fenn is a comic artist, blogger and game designer.
Tales From The All Night Cafe 