The Truth About These Strange Times

Duke of London Drive-in Cinema, The Brentford Project, London

Georgia Peck and Merlin McCormack started up the drive-in cinema at the end of July 2020. There have been five films to date and all were sold out. Before lockdown they held Classics and Cake on a Sunday morning, an event for classic car owners. It brought the car community together in London. So when the cinema opened, there was a huge amount of interest. People come in a variety of cars from rare exceptional cars like a Blower Bentley or grandpa’s old Triumph or MG Midget that have been in the garage for years. If you don’t have access to a supercar you can hire a classic car for the day. You pick it up at midday, drive it round all afternoon, pick up your date and come to the drive-in cinema for a movie, pizza and beer. It's a place of conviviality, and it was a pleasure to capture their high spirits on film.

When lockdown came along photographer Sam Pearce went out into the world to capture the bizarre tenor of the times.

During lockdown there have been times when you think that an alien visitor looking at our world might not know that all had changed – and in Yeats’ phrase changed utterly. But the fact is that we have; it’s just that this change has taken place on the inside. The challenge for a photographer is to show what’s going on in the interior - that’s particularly hard when you consider that the camera is often stubborn in wanting to show surfaces and mere appearances. The other difficulty with photographing today’s world is that we’ve all seen lockdown photographed so much; I wanted to show Finito World readers things they’d not seen before in the nationals or on the BBC website. I remember David Hockney saying in respect of his wonderful late landscapes that a sunset is a cliché in art, but that it’s never a cliché in nature – and that’s the challenge. We already have our lockdown clichés: the empty workspace, the masked queues – but head out into the real world and it’s always different, always surprising. I wanted to look beyond what we think we know, and find other subjects. I discovered a world full of quiet hope, and subtle creativity. There has always been something so very private about the English, and it is heart-breaking to think how much stoic exhaustion and hardship there is out there. This comes through in the pictures too. What follows is a snapshot of a society and a collective workplace in shock, but reacting, pivoting – finding new ways to be, and new ways to work. I hadn’t thought of this before Covid-19, but we’re such a hard-working society. And I think if consolation is to be had anywhere it’s in that.

George Street Canteen, St Albans, Hertfordshire

Luke McKnight, Supervisor, 25 years old, has been working at the restaurant since last December when he came back from travelling. Luke found it a very strange time at the beginning of lockdown, and the restaurant closed for six weeks and then opened up in May to do takeaways for ten weeks. During May, the owners, Julie and Kevin asked Luke to come in a few days a week to clear the middle garden of the restaurant. Social distancing in place they transformed the garden into a space they could use.

Highgate Ballet School

Owner Julie Cronshaw was planning on opening up her ballet classes again when the government suddenly changed tack and she was faced with continuing to teach her online zoom classes. The accumulation of hours of online teaching made Julie feel unwell and her assistant Ros suggested teaching the ballet classes outside. Ros called Julie and said “everybody is doing activities in the open air so why don’t we organise ballet classes in your garden?” The parents of students were grateful for the live classes: for most of the children it was the first time they had any live classes in months and socialised.

St Albans Cathedral - A Last Supper by Lorna May Wadsworth.

"Following the killing of George Floyd and the reaction of Black Lives Matter, St Albans Cathedral installed a prayer station using a copy of Lorna May Wadsworth’s painting, ‘A Last Supper’, which depicts Jesus as a Jamaican. There have been some angry reactions, mainly focused on the colour of Jesus. How could we be so stupid as not to know Jesus was not black, but a Jew?

The fact is that from ancient times Christians in different parts of the world have depicted Jesus with their own racial features. This painting stands in a long and orthodox tradition.

The Christians who painted the images of course knew Jesus was a Jew. The point is not historical but theological: in Christ God is united with people of all kinds and races. What matters is that we are all made in God’s image, and God loves and values us equally, of whatever race we are.

In England Jesus has often been depicted as white, with no objections raised. But England is now home to many races, and it is hardly inappropriate to depict Jesus as also belonging to one of them.

An elderly gentleman visited the Cathedral shortly after the installation appeared. He wept at seeing the painting. He had come from Jamaica on the Windrush, and though he was born and raised an Anglican, he said it was the first time he felt welcome in the C of E.

His reaction puts the angry ones in perspective - and makes me very glad we installed the painting."

— Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans

Carly Samuels - Hair Colourist

Carly was working right up until the lockdown on March 23rd and then didn’t work again until the lockdown was eased for her business on July 4th.

She found herself home schooling her daughter aged 8 yrs while her husband worked from home. The government guidelines only gave her three weeks notice to open up her business. Carly ordered PPE, visor, masks, hand sanitisers and disinfectant. Although some of her clients were a little dubious and decided to wait a while before coming in, most of them were desperate to have their hair painted and she saw almost all of her clients in the first three weeks of opening up her business.

Carly is now working from home as well as visiting clients in their homes. She doesn’t have too many people in at once. The clients' appointments are spaced out with enough time to disinfect the seating areas and wash basins in between clients. They are greeted at the door by Carly with hand santiser, a mask and she takes everyone’s temperature.

Clients are less likely to read magazines but instead prefer to bring in their iPads to play scrabble or games.

‘It’s really business as usual with PPE, an eye smile and a cup of coffee or tea,’ she says.

Sarah-Jane Janackovic - Mildred & Me

Sarah-Jane Janackovic, an artist, works from home in her spare room. During lockdown she started making scrubs bags for nurses at her local hospital, Birmingham Heartlands Hospital. She made 160 bags for NHS workers on a purely voluntary basis.

Eventually she needed to start covering the costs of making the scrubs bags so on 4th June started painting glasses to sell online. To date she has made 600 and the numbers are growing each week. It has been extremely popular. Her business is expanding and now she paints face masks and hand sanitisers.

Wembley Sailing Club

A few weeks before lockdown Wembley Sailing Club held the Merlin Open. There were no government guidelines at this time and the club felt there wasn’t a significant risk. It’s one of the main events of the year at the club and people were looking forward to it.

Weeks later lockdown came and the club was physically closed and a newsletter was sent out informing the members that they couldn’t come to the club to sail or socialise.

Eventually there was talk of easing the lockdown, it was difficult to interpret the government guidelines and what it meant for sailing plus the RYA quite rightly took a conservative approach.

After several online committee meetings, the club decided to open up for social sailing only, no racing. This meant that the clubhouse was still shut but people could come and sail single hander boats. Double handers weren’t allowed unless they were from the same family.

There were social distancing signs put up and hand sanitisers at the gate entrance. There was a brilliant atmosphere and a lot of the crews bought themselves lasers so they could continue to sail.

From mid August, racing has started up again, the clubhouse has opened to use the changing rooms although not the showers and the RYA training courses for adults and children have been fully booked.

At a time where everyone seems very stressed and concerned, sailing has been a big release for people and very good for mental health. It is one of the few sports that you can do all year round and Wembley is hoping they can continue to sail throughout the winter.

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