Street life – Having a Sit Down
I haven’t been out with my camera much in the last couple of weeks. So I have trawled through my archives to find images that I have been wanting to post for ages but needed a common theme. And I think I’ve found it – Having a sit down. It’s a great British institution, having a sit down, usually it is accompanied by a cup of tea, as in “I’m having a sit down and a cup of tea.”
It’s the first thing I do when I get home – have a sit down and a cup of tea, even if I’ve been sitting in my car or on trains and buses, I still need to have a sit down when I get in. And there are various reasons for having a sit down when you’re out. In the first image here, taken on a sunny but windy day outside the Tate Modern, some are eating their lunch (brought with them as evidenced by the silver foil, not bought), having a fag and reading or just reading. In the second image, the reason for the sit down is waiting for the bus, having a fag and a chat on the phone, all at the same time – now that’s multi-tasking! The delicious irony of me taking a street photograph of a woman in the street in front of a “Street Photography Now” advert, is the icing on the cake. In the third photo, a young homeless man on Great Russell Street reads a newspaper while begging. So he’s not technically ‘having a sit down’ as he lives on the street and doesn’t really have anywhere else to sit except on the pavement. But the fact that he’s reading the paper means he’s still part of ‘regular’ (for want of a better word) life; it’s just that he’s begging while other people would be having a fag or eating their lunch and would be sitting on a seat.
