Pictures, Roofs and Paranoia

More pictures can be found online via Google - just type: 'grand arcade cambridge' ... and turns out: It's even on Wikipedia!

When I first read Nury's column on how people get chased away from taking photos of buildings I thought: ‘Well, it’s a column. It’s supposed to be funny, so he has to exaggerate a bit. Ehh, wrong…! It’s all true, and it’s not just happening in Asia – it happens here in our towns and cities. Here the story goes: Dear hubby and I are still on holidays which we are not spending anywhere else but at home. Nothing to do with carbon footprint, but all to do with two mental cats who will beat each other up whenever we are not careful enough to keep them apart. But this is another tale.

So we decided to do day trips, and today Cambridge was on the agenda. Cambridge has a new mall which I already had explored, so hubby had catching up to do. Off we went in summer mode, credit card and new camera charged to spend a proper tourist day in the famous town.

Made it into the parking garage without a scratch – I was driving – and after a sandwich/chocolate-cake pit stop at a conveniently located coffee bar close to the garage, hubby started taking pictures of the new mall’s artistically built roof.

This is Cambridgeshire I’m talking of, next to Suffolk – meaning East Anglia, deepest province of England. Every country has this little patch of which all the other patches are making fun of: That’s us! You won’t have to finish the word Suffo.. to have people start biting lips and slightly turning heads towards the shade to try avoiding the giggle and looking into your eyes.

We don’t have a lot of inspiring buildings here. We have a lot of old stuff which usually is named after some king or queen and which is nice, but if something new is erected that can keep up with the rest of the world we feel pride, even if it only happens in the county next to ours and especially when owning a brand new camera.

And then a friendly harpy came flying out of nowhere telling us – yes, the harpy could talk – that it is not allowed to take pictures. We both blushing – why did I blush? I didn’t do anything! – and hubby bracing himself asking: Can you tell us why that is…?

It actually only turned out now that the harpy was friendly, because she didn’t beak us to death, but kindly explained that ‘firstly, the building was under copyright and secondly, for security reasons to avoid terrorist attacks’. Apparently even she thought that was a bit ludicrous and she added in turning away: ‘Well, at least you have the one picture.’ Hehe, we actually have two – bless hubby, good boy!

We are now looking for some terrorist who might be interested in purchasing the  excess one. It the terrorist deal should not work out, some architect might want to take a look if there is something worthwhile copying from it: We consider auctioning on eBay as well. After being baffled in that unexpected way we focussed on shopping and some more cappuccino intake for a while, but we wouldn’t have German blood flowing in our veins if we wouldn’t want to dip a bit deeper into that matter: If it’s forbidden, it surely should be clearly signposted, shouldn’t it? Ha! Nothing! Nowhere! Loads of other stuff forbidden, but not shooting photos. Not a single sign!

you know where to find me to obtain full size picture

Only later we thought it through: The building consists of two parts: An old and a new one, the later of which is privately owned, as far as I know. If you would to someone’s house starting to take photos of the electronic gadgets and jewellery, a suspicious mind might want to object to that! Thinking along that line, it’s fair enough that harpy was hired to tell off people.

But what about the old part? We didn’t see any relatives of her there. If it weren’t private property, then surely people were allowed to take photos…but what about terrorist attacks?

Here is a thought: What if it might even be wished for to attract terrorists dropping their bombs on the old roof while leaving the new one alone. Given the down sloping economy the mall people might not have been able to afford the refurbishment of the old bit, and are now hoping, that somebody is doing the dirty work of knocking it all down, for them.