Christmas I've received my twenty-first birthday present at the age of twenty-seven. Let me explain. When I was 21, my main present was to be a piece of art of some description. Something I liked, but also I think something, which captured the essence of who I am. At the time nothing came to mind. I hunted through art fairs and craft fairs but nothing came. As time went on I decided that perhaps there wasn't anything I really loved which wasn't hanging in an art gallery. There was a portrait of a ballerina I spotted when I was twenty-four, but I think my attraction there was purely hormonal. So when I opened my final present on Christmas Day I was flabbergasted to find my perfect picture.
?The Flat Iron Building? as photographed by Amy Gibbings
I nearly cried. True.
I have a habit of talking a lot sometimes. I start and I'll go for hours - coherently but commenting on everything. I was at a market with my parents during my lunch hour from work the Saturday before Christmas. It was a combined continental market (selling German and Dutch produce and beer) and craft market in Manchester. On one of the stalls were some of the loveliest photographs I'd ever seen and I started enthusing and particularly fixating on a particular architectural oddity. Here is something which in reality shouldn't exist - it's tall, it's weirdly shaped, and there isn't anything like it. Other than Liverpool Cathedral it's my favourite building. I'd decided my parents hadn't been listening as they never seem to and just carried on. It transpired that when I'd left them they'd gone back and bought it. They had been listening when I least expected it.
I spent most of Christmas Day just looking at it. It's about A4 in black and white. It's the angle everyone shows, straight on, but this time with a lamp post in front which accentuates the building?s central angle. The scene is covered in snow (perfect for this time of year).
So now I have my 21st birthday present, my best present ever.
