Punctum

My mother’s neighbour brought round some photographs yesterday morning of her daughter and son-in-law’s holiday in Devon. One of the photographs showed the son-in-law performing for the camera, leaning at a dangerous angle on a flight of steps, supported by a hand rail. It isn’t clear where he is: the building behind him might be a piece of industrial archaeology or an abandoned nineteenth century church. Immediately to his right is a pair of Romanesque windows with stone frames and someone, with great care, has decorated each arch with the word fuck, a detail his wife, my neighbour’s daughter, clearly didn’t see when she took the picture.