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John Arthur Nichol

  • A man cleans the Hungry Jack’s sign with a broom that spouts water. The water misses, sailing up over the sign and arcing down to the driveway.

  • Spit Road, Mosman. An orange, transparent, spiky ball sits among bark chips at the base of a wire fence.

  • Mirror

    The Shop in the Mirror

    An arched, black-framed mirror stands in its packaging on a speckled floor, leaning so that everything reflected is also on an angle. Inside the frame, in reverse, are green boxes of V8 drinks stacked up at the side of a fridge, two shelves containing Easter eggs and chocolate Easter bunnies, and a big grey rack of open, refrigerated shelving full of boxes and packets lit by fluorescent tubes. A wide, straight-sided metal flue rises to a grey industrial ceiling with sprinklers, hanging lights and other attachments.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 30

  • For Putin, a cease-fire’s appealing -
    His war of aggression is reeling;
    But Ukraine will control
    All its territory, whole,
    Ere it stops for a scone and Darjeeling.

  • Slice

    A slice of our beautiful coastline

    Portrait-oriented image. The top of the photo is all sky, leaving about a third at the bottom for the foreground. Dark grey clouds at the top merge into white clouds stained with grey, which descend to meet a thin slice of flat grey sea. Unmown grass in the foreground encroaches on freestanding sandstone boulders in the middle ground, and a sagging temporary fence on the left, surrounding a big, net-covered mound. A sign attached to the fence says: ‘Work Safe - Home Safe’, and a bent metal sign lying beneath the fence says: ‘Danger - Construction Site - Do Not Enter’. The lighting is overcast and gloomy, and the top of the fence is in stark silhouette against the clouds.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 29

  • Just past the Anzac Bridge, a network of vast steel pylons has been driven into the water.

  • A tall, slender woman walks past the theatre. She has long blonde hair, a loose blue top and skinny black trousers. Her hands sway with the movement of her elbows, and each contains a white-topped something. She brings the left one to her mouth, and drinks.

    Entering a driveway, she rests her cup on the roof of a blue car parked rear-on to the street. Lights flash and she opens the passenger door. She sits sideways in the vehicle, feet on the driveway, cup beside them, one elbow on a knee with the second white-topped object lifted so she can see inside. Fingers delve. Her hand goes up to her mouth. She chews.

  • Four Japanese women stand in the wind, sentinels at the four corners of a covered pram.

  • A four-year-old strides across the road with his mother, swinging his one free hand with enormous energy.

  • A woman crosses at the lights with her stroller, crests the footpath and engages two similar women with similar strollers. All three adopt matching grins of many teeth, and crinkly-cheeked gazes of sunshine and joy, accompanied by an array of high-pitched sounds that no one could possibly disentangle. The waiting two hone in on the just-arrived stroller, directing their eyes, teeth and noise in that direction.

    Appalled, but aware of its obligations, the baby grins back at them.

  • Voices on a bus.

    Girl 1 : ‘Know what I mean?’

    Girl 2: ‘Not really. Like …’ (long, inaudible mumble)

    Girl 1: ‘Exactly!’

  • At St Leonards a man lumbers down the stairs and sits facing me. He pulls his mask away from his mouth and drapes it under his chin. Why?

  • Movement at the Beach

    A portrait-oriented picture looking along a curving grass verge with a construction fence on the left and parked cars in the background. The fence has two separate coverings: a padded green plastic overlay in the foreground with white, illegible text, and beyond that a grey sheet made of woven plastic, like raffia. The bottom of the sheet has lost many lines of horizontal weave, leaving long thin tassles like a fringe all the way along. A strong wind lifts the sheet so that it bellies out over the grass, its tassles whipping and flying. Parts of the sheet, and sections of the tassled fringe, are blurred by their movement, while others are frozen by the camera and appear sharp.

  • Is anyone e’er so reviled
    As one who would murder a child?
    And could there be any
    Who’ve murdered as many
    As Putin, as so far compiled?

  • Prompt

    Prompt, Smiling Service - Mary at Mary’s, Dee Why

    A woman stands just inside an open-fronted cafe, resting one hand on the back of a chair and smiling at the camera. She wears a black t-shirt, brown trousers and dark brown boots, and has one knee bent. Inside the cafe are tables and chairs, two tall fridges against the far wall, the serving counter and, behind it, a doorway leading into the kitchen. The floor is tiled, and glass doors are folded back against the right-hand side. A sign above the entrance says “Mary’s Dee Why” and “Serving Adore Estate Coffee”.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 28

  • Two smokestacks tower above the turn-off from Victoria Road towards the Anzac Bridge. On top of one stack is a big white rabbit with pink, floppy ears.

  • A little girl climbs the steps behind her mother, clutching a purple lamb.

  • A young woman with purple hair slouches along the walkway, scanning the park for evidence of hostility. Finding no-one to challenge, she takes out her phone with a sneer.

  • A familiar man zips through the park again on his electric scooter, sitting on two big sacks of rice. This time his feet are tucked behind.

  • A tiny little boy dawdles behind his mother on the walkway. Skinny legs and sleeves too long. His mother waits, and he hands her a drink to carry. Further along he finds a metal plate set into the path and stops to examine it. He goes down on all fours, then rocks back into a squat and watches his mother, waiting for her to notice. She does, and she calls to him. He crab-walks to the other side of the metal plate and sits down comfortably with his back to her.

  • The bus is full of penitents, heads bowed, phones in their laps.

  • Before the IMAX Theatre is a lawyers' building, in two shades of purple.

  • Hanging Around, Manly Wharf

    Sunlight shines through shallow water, lighting stretches of sand between patches of dark seaweed. Seven plastic canoes, red and yellow, are attached to ropes stretching above the surface. The canoes float at various angles, half in the sun and half in the shade of an old timber jetty. Near the canoes, a round yellow float drifts at the end of a rope, and in the darkness beneath the jetty, an eighth canoe is almost invisible.

  • The Axis, claims Putin’s new sting,
    Lives again in the West. What a thing!
    But the only new Axis,
    In theory and praxis,
    Is Russia aligned with Beijing.

  • Support

    It’s a strong support network, but they make it hard to sit down.

    Beside a busy road, building scaffolding begins in the right foreground and stretches into the distance, top left corner. The scaffolding stands at the edge of a tiled footpath, and immediately outside it is a bench, with metal frames and arm-rests and brown timber slats. There’s very little room to sit comfortably. Against the back of the bench is a planted area with tall grasses, trunks of palm trees and tall, dense, spiky green semi-succulents.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 27