Stanley Pt 2

Here’s some weird stuff that goes on out here. Above, you will see some shoes on sticks. They're out by the road on the way to Stanley and have a tradition behind them: if you leave one boot, it means you’re coming back. If you leave a pair, it means that you’re not. Let’s be serious: all that happened was some dude lost a shoe and, in order to make himself not look like a complete tool, he put it on a stick and made something up about coming back. Yeah, he’s coming back, TO FIND HIS OTHER SHOE.



This is a highlight of Stanley. It’s a large pole with directions to other places. That’s a great bit for the tourist board. “Come to our island and find out how to get to other places.” Fucking brilliant.



Look at some of the places: Tinsley, Abroath, Colwyn Bay. Even Lincoln is on there (the blue sign below Prestatyn). It does make me wonder why there was an international conflict over ownership of this place. Of course, there were several hundred who gave their lives defending British ownership of these islands. They recently celebrated “Liberation Day” here (14th June, 1982). It’s one of the few places where foreign military isn’t shunned by the local population.






I’ve overheard conversations of soldiers that talk about how shit this place is. If it’s bad now, imagine how empty and desolate it would have been nearly thirty years ago. When there was no internet or mobile phone or TV. Throughout the countryside, there are small stacks of rocks to mark where someone died. Clearly, their deaths were for a good cause but what did it feel like back then? What’s the difference in experience between Tommy Gun, a Corporal on duty in the Falklands during 1982 and his son out in Afghanistan today? Does it all blur into one when you’re running from gunfire? Or does the heavy media presence today mean that modern soldiers have a much better knowledge of a situation than guys who were dumped in the South Atlantic and told to shoot some Argentineans?



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Ash

Stanley, Pt. 1

As I sat in my hotel room watching an American TV channel, subtitled in Spanish, on a British colonised island, I thought: “How fucked up is this?”

There’s nothing here. I read a review in the local paper about how great an event it was to have two dudes playing guitars at a wine night. Go to Kind on a Tuesday night, then tell me how great it is. There’s no naturally grown goods here. The best produce is wool and goose meat. I tried goose meat. It sucked. It was a bit like beef only really bland. Granted, it was in a pâté but that’s spreadable meat. It’s in the same league as jam. When you’re up against jam, you’d better have flavour. It didn’t. However, the locally fished trout was the shit. There was lots of it and it was seared. I don’t know what “seared” is but it’s good. Try it.



I ate you.



The main point of this post is that Stanley (the capital of the Falkland Islands) is a weird mix of cultures in a very small place that, somehow, creates nothing.



This is a typical house in the town. It looks wooden but it’s actually metal. Nearly all the buildings are made of metal. I saw only a handful made of brick or wood. Apparently metal is stronger than wood or brick. I’d go along with that. The winds out here are pretty crazy, so the houses have to be strong. The trees are all bent in one direction because they’ve been blown that way. The use of metal for housing means there’s an abundance of colour about the place: yellow houses, blue houses, white houses with green roofs and brown houses with red doors. The next time I go into the town, I’ll try and take a picture from up on a hill to show it.



Each street looks like an American suburb mixed in with UK road signs and a sense of isolation often found in seaside towns. This sense of isolation is heightened by the fact that you’re only a few hundred miles from the Antarctic. I took this photo at sunset (around 4pm) on a Friday. Kids were coming home from school. Their final year is year 10 and, obviously, the curriculum isn’t comparable to back home. If they want to go further, they have to fly to the UK. However, it’s conceivable that most of these kids already have their lives set out for them. They’ll work the farm or the docks or take up after their parents business. It’s a closed off life that, from the outside, looks comfortable. They’ll never have to worry about what to do when they finish their degree and have to go into the real world because their world is so small. Outside of British Forces personnel, there are two thousand people on these islands. Take a look at your Facebook friends list. For those of you who have around 500 (or more) friends, that would be a quarter of the entire population of this country. Are you beginning to understand yet?

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Peace,

Ash xx