This is an exciting time at Edge Hill. We are starting our single honours programme this year and we have a bumper collection of writers this year. Here are this year's Mass Observation exercises. Or rather: hewre are the first few. I will be adding others later.
Robert
Mass Observation 2011
It’s cold. My thin jacket was an unfortunate choice of clothing for an hour of sitting outside. A large tree shows the first signs of autumn as it stands obtrusively in front of the crowd of people my eyes had been following. The crowd in all its colours has disappeared, so I’m left with the muted leaves of the tree and the grey sky which make the high visibility jackets of the construction team draw my eye repeatedly. I want to stop looking at them, I want to observe the hairstyles of the passers-by, but every movement brings me back to them as they work laying bricks. Some are doing more, but idle machinery blocks my view and I know too little about building to guess what they’re up to.
A dropped pack of cigarettes makes me look ahead once more. The guy in the grey tracksuit either didn’t notice it fall or it’s empty; I won’t check which. Framed by two posts, a pair stand in conversation. It looks friendly enough, a few gestures imply that he’s directing her somewhere but they’ve been there for a long time. Obviously the directions have finished and small talk has begun. There seems to be no colour between them whatsoever. He is in a grey jumper and slightly darker grey jeans, and she’s in a beige cardigan and black leggings. They practically blend in to the concrete and the miserable sky. Rudely, I dismiss them as uninteresting and turn my attention elsewhere.
Between shivers, I notice a bird. I watch it flying over to a building to my left before my gaze is broken by a source of a repetitive beeping sound. A large furniture truck (or is it a van?) reverses and it comes to a stop directly in front of me. I’m talking a metre maximum, and I can now see nothing but its white and yellow design guaranteeing quality service. Maybe if I’d been more like my dad growing up I’d be able to describe it better. As it stands, my total lack of vehicle related vocabulary leaves me to say only that it’s big, it has wheels, it’s a bit dirty and it may be a truck or it may be a van. Picture from that what you will.
Stuart Price
Observation of Main Entrance
Beneath an electric sky a private Garden of Eden stands tall and resolutely outside the Main Entrance, caught in another time and another place from the rest of the world that encroaches on all sides. The life giver of the Garden’s tranquil splendour flexes its mighty branches, announcing to the world outside that it is here to stay. Gratitude is unspoken, yet is still expressed by the mother and father sheltering their young beneath the tree’s maternal embrace. Like Adam and Eve before them they were permitted to frolic once, utterly liberated from the conventions of the ever changing environment around them.
But now they stand guard and stoic, devoted to the protection of their children, liberated in soul but not in body. The little girl clings to her mother, though her attention is placed elsewhere despite her warm grasp of the child. Her expression reads of a woman resigned to being the next eternal mother of the Garden, like the tree above them. The little girl shall also know the same fate one day. The tree is not the only guardian. A lowly pigeon nestles within its shade, deceptive and biding its time, as the dragon bided it’s time for the damned souls hoping to pluck the forbidden fruit. Only one man succeeded and even he could not stand to this pigeon’s sedentary determination.
As a mere spectator I felt no right to invade this natural domain. A lone gardener had other ideas, stealthily crouching with his back to the tree, family and pigeon, exposing the intimidating carpet of hair mapping his back and even lower still. All it took was a simple gaze and the pigeon was gone, finding the open air a more favourable place where such sights are rare at best. The tree, the family and I were made of stronger stuff.
Jamie Ryder
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