OddThinking

Last weekend, at a small sports carnival, a local politician was brought in to give a short speech and present the trophies.

He waved away the offer of a bullhorn, and projected his voice confidently, warmly and eloquently. His speech was an artful mix of telling people how wonderful they were, how wonderful the region was and how he was planning to make it even better. There was no sign of hesitation in his voice, even without notes. Unsurprisingly, it contained little actual content – this was no time for policy discussion.

The professional tone of the speech struck me as bizarrely out-of-place at the end of a sports carnival, surrounded with the exhausted bodies of youths still waiting to receive their trophies and proud parents keen to clear up and move on before it got dark and the kids got tired and cranky.

I didn’t notice how much impact his demeanour had made on me, until I started processing the photographs I had taken that day.

I was briefly shocked! “His photos contain red-eye! How unexpectedly unprofessional of him!” I thought, until I realised what I was saying to myself.