Bad photos can say so much, can't they - have you ever noticed? Unposed, with people looking a bit vague perhaps: they really bring the past to life, don't they!
And you'll be clear that by "bad photos" or "indifferent photos", I don't just mean photos with obvious mistakes in them like this "doozy", featuring two kids with their apparently "headless" mum:
a headless mum with her 2 children
It's photos like the following one that I'm thinking about, photos of me, 2 or 3 years old or thereabouts, attending a birthday party for one of my "little friends" with a bunch of kids the same sort of age, all sitting blankly round a table piled with jam sandwiches and a big birthday cake, with none of us really aware of the occasion and with not much thought about interacting with each other.
That's real life isn't it!
this dark and blurry photo is the only record I have of a long-forgotten
birthday party for my "friend" Derek, which I attended when I was about
2 or 3 years old. I'm sitting second from left, and trying
to look interested - oh dear!
Yes,.that's what I like to see - lots of blurred heads, and nobody looking at the camera!
Or it's photos like this of my mother (foreground, left) approaching old age, sitting with two of her sisters and a sister-in-law, and she's looking distinctly detached, sleepy even. That's a bit of reality for you - no posing, no big smiles for the camera, just a slice of everyday life, with its portions of humdrum as well as its portions of excitement.
my mother (bottom left) spending an afternoon with
her sister-in-law Elsie, and 2 of her sisters, Betty and Babs
I think we've all experienced afternoons like that, haven't we. Come on, admit it!
"But why is Colin telling us all this?", I hear you cry.
Well, it's because it's February 27th - it's the day every year on which my sister Jill and I remember our dear late, much-missed sister Kathy, who died on this day in 2013, so 11 years ago now. It's something we both share each year with Kathy's husband, our American brother-in-law Steve, who still lives in the house in Norristown, Pennsylvania where Kathy died on that sad day in 2013.
Each year on this day, I pick out some pictures of Kathy to put on my blog in her memory. Normally I would pick out some of the many dazzling, glamorous pictures I have of her, like this amazing one, and it's "just" a passport photo:
This year, however, I've chosen some indifferent ones, because in a certain kind of way they're more "real". And as a heads up, Kathy's quite a bit younger in them - these pictures have been hanging around in the "not good enough to put in an album" album for over 70 years. You know the album I mean, don't you!
Let me take you back exactly 75 years, to February 1949, the month when wartime clothing rationing finally ended in Britain, and women could think about buying nylons again.
flashback to 1942: women having "stockings" painted
on their legs for 3d (3 old pence), to avoid using up their clothing coupons
The photos below that I've selected must have been taken by my mother. They date from exactly 75 years ago this month, and they were taken in our house in Dover maybe on some dull, cold grey afternoon, when, still young and inexperienced as a mum, our mother was alone in the house with her two lively little ones - me (nearly 3) and Kathy (15 months) - on the family sofa, possibly watching our tiny 9 inch screen TV set, "boosted" by its optional add-on 3 inch magnifier-screen.
She must have decided to get out her old box camera, and she took several pictures, maybe a whole film's worth.
Unfortunately neither I nor Kathy were willing to keep still long enough for her to take some really good ones. But again she's "caught us" in a slice of real life, hasn't she. Here are some of them:
Oops, Kathy's moving, waving her arm about this way and that!
oops - there's me moving about and looking all blurry
but very pleased with myself: were we watching
our primitive old TV with its tiny 9 inch screen, I wonder?
(top photo) me fiddling with a toy and Kathy fascinated by her hands
and (bottom photo) me moving half out of shot and Kathy now fascinated by her dress
Did we not notice that mummy had a camera in her hands? Did we have no sense of occasion? What a madness it all was! And of course in those days you didn't know that a photo was a failure until you had taken the film to the chemists and got the prints back, maybe not till a week later.
But there we both were, together, as per usual. Kathy was born when I was only 20 months old, so of course I don't remember a time when I was my parents' only child. In my memories of childhood Kathy was simply always around.
Happy days!
11:00 Lois and I nip out to the butcher's shop in Barnard's Green. I think Lois is slightly fed up with supermarket meat, and wants to buy again from the "real butcher" with his "proper" locally-sourced meat. You know, it's the shop next to Suzanne's, the unisex hair salon.
The butcher looks slightly menacing standing there with his "chopper", but he's a nice chap really. And he sells us some lovely pork chops for tonight's tea, which is nice!
And how long is it since you got a bill looking like this - with items written down by hand with a pen on the back of an old scrap of paper, and added up column by column in the shopkeeper's head?
the Barnard Green Butcher's hand-written bill
Awwww!!!!
[That's enough nostalgia! - Ed]
19:00 After a satisfying tea of the butcher's locally-sourced pork chops, plus apple sauce, mash and green beans, we settle down on the couch to watch the second programme in Ben Fogle's fascinating new travelogue series "Into the Congo with Ben Fogle" on Channel 5.
And the programme prompts a question in my mind and in Lois's mind. Is the proportion of introverts in the Congo the same as it is here in the UK?
And if it is the same proportion, introverts to extroverts, how do those poor Congolese introverts survive the crazy life down there in the jungle, where seemingly everything that happens is done in public, with an audience of fellow villagers?
Are those poor Congolese introverts able to find a quiet place to read a book - behind a bush perhaps? I definitely think we should be told, don't you!
In tonight's episode we see presenter Ben experiencing the culture and customs of the tiny village of Ganga-bongui, deep in the Congolese jungle.
And as Lois and I observe this "unique coming-of-age ceremony", we can't help feeling sorry for those poor Congolese teenage boys, when "rite of passage time" turns out to be almost a week where they're not allowed to sleep, surrounded by annoying non-stop dancing villagers, before finally being circumcised in public.
And we see the already kind of "dead" expressions on the faces of the poor boys who are the "candidates" for manhood.
The preparatory days of sleep deprivation are supposed to act as some kind of anaesthetic, according to local Congolese opinion - but Lois and I find that hard to believe. Has anybody asked the poor boys for their assessment, or sought their "feedback" ? I bet they haven't !
And the poor boys are not even allowed to flinch when the "operation" is being carried out - if you flinch, it "brings shame upon your family" apparently.
What a load of nonsense!
By way of contrast, as presenter Ben is being driven away from the village, he recalls with nostalgia his own coming-of-age "ceremony", in London in the late 1980's.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
22:00 We've got to get up early tomorrow and have breakfast early. We've got an Ocado supermarket delivery, courtesy of driver Natalie, coming some time between 8:30 am and 9:30 am, as Natalie tells us overnight:
It's not so easy in Ganga-Boungui, though. When you get up, you have to go out and find your own breakfast, and I don't mean at the nearest McDonald's.
A few nuts and berries maybe, or if you're lucky a nice piece of "bushmeat" from the market, a nice bit of antelope or a porcupine maybe?
Tempting, perhaps [not!], but I think I'll stick to my bowl of Cheerios.
But what a madness it all is !!!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment