25 years on: Lancaster photographer captures daily life on the buses and at Morecambe’s punk festival

As A Little English City celebrates its 25th anniversary, we are featuring some of Dave’s photographs.

Today the focus is on the time he spent aboard Stagecoach buses in April, 2000 and the punk festival in Morecambe that summer.

Suffering a streaming cold and just days before he was due to run a marathon, Dave wasn’t looking forward to his day with Stagecoach.

He jumped aboard a bus to Keswick and chatted to the driver.

“He told me people were using the buses less these days and yet the roads were getting harder to use cars on, strange,” wrote Dave in his photographer’s diary.

He alighted the bus before Kendal and returned on another to Lancaster where he took some photographs of the bus station.

“The depot was closing and the station was due to be knocked down but the future looked good.”

Dave’s day on the buses ended as the schools came out, packing the bus station.

“Taking a bus home I was thrown in with the school kids. Upstairs I was jeered and shouted at. I carried on shooting in defiance.”

Another of Dave’s rowdier assignments was taking pictures at the Holidays in the Sun punk festival in the Dome at Morecambe in July 2000.

“It was a stunning night with skies that lit up the bay. A stark contrast to the aggressive look to the people that gathered for the festival. I was a little nervous at first to approach them, but after a warm

greeting from my first attempt I managed to get most of the pictures I wanted.

"Inside the Dome it was hot and dark. Many of those I wished to photograph needed to save face in front of friends and made an insulting gesture or shouted at me when I pointed the

camera.

“On stage the performers screamed and spat, and behind the barrier the crowd reciprocated by throwing plastic cups of beer and spitting back. Anything short of the target, got me.”

All photographs taken by Dave for A Little English City can be viewed online at https://djclark.com/2000/ and copies of his book, can be ordered via the website.