I needed to go to Cambridge to take photos when there was sufficient good daylight and an absence of people. Fearing greater activity with the easing of restrictions, I rose and ventured out early, very early in fact. Leaving my house just before 5 am, I was parked up in Cambridge at 5.57, there was just one other car in the car park when I arrived. Using back roads for the journey I saw probably no more than six vehicles but I did see a black squirrel, it darted across the road in front of me.
I had brought two cameras, just in case, I didn’t want to repeat my journey, normally I use the guided bus, parking at St Ives. Given the current state of affairs and the necessity of an early start I used the car. Walking along Emmanual Road beside Christ’s Pieces another squirrel scampered out to cross the road a grey one this time.
Cambridge was the quietest I’ve known it. The combination of a Saturday, the earliness of the hour, the lack of students and the lockdown all combined to give the place a sense of total abandonment. The destination was the corner of Benet Street and Trumpington Street, to photograph the Grasshopper Clock housed on the wall of the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College.
It is for me a beautiful piece of work, functional artistry. The clock is mechanical, using principles first developed by John Harrison in the eighteenth century. The grasshopper sitting on top, gobbling the minutes up one second at a time There was just one person I saw sleeping rough a woman in a shop doorway along Trumpington Street. An improvement from the many I have seen in the city at other times. Why can’t we look after people better?
I was back in the car and driving away before 6, the walk back to the car park saw market stalls being set up but I didn’t notice one shop that was open. The same car was the sole occupant of the car park when I left for home.
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