Chris Bell 2008

I’m sure you’ll sympathise when I say that neither multimedia 4qation nor yellow paper distribution was a serious option this year… but we did manage to enlist Frank’s help, in conjunction with some of my miraculously salvaged yellow paper quotes from two years ago—the Linger Awhile ones that disappeared mysteriously but which have since been found again. I chose my quote for this year (the one the five-week-old Frank is holding in these shots) from My Tango With Barbara Strozzi:

“When I left her I spun out into the North End Road where the street lamps glowed like fire balloons. A 28 bus trundled by as shiny and sweetly red as a toffee apple. Scatterings of Saturday-night shouted and screamed in random decibels that spiralled into the darkness above the illuminations of Ryman, Fish and Chips, and Cancer Research UK. Brightness pervaded the North End Road all the way to the night lights in Waitrose. At the roundabout I crossed to the Fulham Road which was awash with buses, cars, taxis, litter and louts of all classes. Turned into Barclay Road at Domino’s Pizza and made my way to the west side of Eel Brook Common, Basuto Road and home, descending through levels of unlight and quiet to ordinary reality where I was uncertain of her kiss that still lingered on my tongue.’”

from My Tango With Barbara Strozzi, Chapter One: ‘Phil Ockermann’, page 27 (published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007)