Crazy Eights

Myself and my cousin D shared a flat in Bray for a few years in the early 1990s. It was a dreamy time, perhaps the most daydreamy years of my unusually daydreamy life. Occasionally we'd go wandering about with our cameras, photographing whatever we came across.

On this cold wintery evening we had brought along a blank white plastic mask (similar to the one in the film Halloween) which we'd purchased in a joke/novelty shop in Dublin. We took turns photographing ourselves wearing this prop, peering out windows of houses, standing on rain-swept roads, etc. What we were looking to create were little spookily atmospheric moments. The idea didn't really come off, and the picture above (of my cousin and a stranger's dog) was taken in one of the intervals between 'takes'.

Bray was, or seemed to us then, what Americans call a sleepy little burg. It suited us in many ways, and we had friends (and even, some of the time, girlfriends and not-very-demanding jobs), but still often found ourselves drifting like tumbleweeds about the place.

I think this may also have been the day we stepped into a lounge in one of those sea-facing hotels looking for a quiet corner. All the corners were quiet, the place empty but for us. Perfect. When the barman asked what he could do for us, I said (in one of those odd spasms of intimacy, as if he might want to share a confidence) 'we're just looking for a quiet place to sit with a pot of tea and a game of Crazy Eights.' When I sat down my cousin was laughing. 'Do you realise how camp that sounded?' I think many in Bray (apart from our occasional girlfriends) had us pegged as a gay couple, something we both found wonderfully amusing.