I haven’t been off the Isle of Man for nearly a year. Just writing that fills me with a sense of panic. I miss the long, monotonous waits at airports and the gruelling, 12-hour drive to the far north of Scotland to join fishing boats. I crave for the crappy, low-budget motels and bed & breakfasts and sleeping, contorted, across two armchairs in the bar of a cross-channel ferry. I don’t find any of it unpleasant. I enjoy eating over-priced pre-packaged sandwiches and people-watching at airports and motorway service stations. I also love driving, and unexplainably, there is a strange masochistic satisfaction in sleeping rough on the midnight Stena Sealink crossing to Calais.
The way I work is that I find something that interests me, then photograph it; it’s the only thing I’m good at. Apart from an HGV licence and an NVQ level 3 in childcare, photography is the only professional qualification I possess, and photojournalism is the only type of photography I enjoy. I’m working on a couple of projects at home, but on an island that’s only 10-miles wide and 30-miles long, I do feel like a caged bear.
I might have to start sleeping in my car…
PHIL KNEEN 
or put a tent in your garden 🙂
really understand you – right now the only joy in my life is the weekly protests in Jerusalem, actually, they take place daily in the whole country but I’m still working every day from morning until the evening so only sometimes have this superpower to attend the evening-night protests in the middle of the work-week.
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I agree with you: you are a good photographer, very, very good. Anywhere you are
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Could you do a project on childcare using the skills you have along the lines of the Fishing Fleet? As an ex-Early Years worker myself I don’t think that people outside the profession have any understanding of the training, paperwork, planning etc that goes into a single day! would love to see a really gritty piece of work on that!
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