Wednesday 28 April 2010

Poloroid faces

Face of the week (two even).
Just for a change this week the camera is pointing at myself and my sister. This picture is well over three decades old and was taken by my old Poloroid Instamatic. I got it as a Christmas present one year. I had a hard time saving up pocket money for the really expensive film cartridges and flash plug-ins. Usually my mum would treat me to some free cartridges when we went on holiday or at Christmas. So I eventually filled my photo album with either festive pics or ones like this one on our hols. The dingy you see us using was notorious in our family history. A lot of our summer adventures took us to Devon or Wales. On arriving at our holiday destination, the first and most vital family mission was locating the nearest Betting Shop to our digs. My dad was a terror for the gee-gees (horse-racing). Waiting outside the bookies was always a holiday low point but he usually made up for it during the rest of the day. One year he actually won £20 pounds. With the winnings he bought the dingy in the picture. We had a lot of fun in that dingy. Unfortunately, it also almost killed me. On holiday with our extended family my younger cousin and I were paddling in a bay thinking we were quite safe. The tide had other ideas and swept us out into deep water and deep trouble. My cousin was too young to row and my paddling was mainly for show. I was certainly no match for the tide. We didn't really understand how much danger we were in. My uncle tried to swim out to us and it seemed like we were going out faster than he could swim. I think he eventually got a hand on the trailing tow rope. And we were saved. Phew. Maybe I was like the cat with nine lives. I know the dingy incident wasn't the first one I'd chalked off. It didn't stop us from using the dingy again but from there on in, well, we were a lot more cautious. Eventually, after a few years, the trusty, and almost fateful vessel started to get punctures. In the course of repairing the damage my dad managed to superglue his fingers together, which was careless, but not half as careless as supergluing our dingy to the floor. Ahh... Happy Days.

11 comments:

  1. That sure looks like the good old days. You both look so happy. I think I used up several of my nine lives too growing up in the 1970's.

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  2. Hey!!! There you are! :) This is great.Wow you really had some great adventures with that thing. Had laughing with the 'gluing it to the floor...no way....LOL. Thanks so much for participating in 'Face of the Week', good to have you back!

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  3. You two look so cute! These are treasured memories and the good old times!

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  4. Great poloroid! I love old pictures. It's funny. There is a photo web site where one can do all kinds of fun, touching up type of things to pictures but there's also an option to make it look like a 1970's poloroid. Anyway, it was fun to read the story.

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  5. Marvellous story - super gluing fingers is careless - but gluing the boat to the floor is priceless! I'm so glad you weren't swept out to sea :-)
    I enjoyed your previous post about Harry - he does look very smart in his Sherlock Hound coat - and, of course, for a Labrador, no walk is complete without a dip in water ;-)

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  6. What a great story and cute picture. It's so wonderful to look at older photos like this. Well done :)

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  7. Wonderful captured memory! I remember the polaroid moments. This seems to be a very happy one. Love it. Have a great day.

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  8. Great memories Michael.
    I remember the first Polaroid camera I ever saw; thought it was amazing, how a picture popped out almost instantly.

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  9. That's a great story Michael,and I loved the photo. You were two very cute kids.

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  10. this is such a great story, loved it! made me laugh...almost fateful vessel - ha! Glad you survived the tide (i got pulled out in a riptide once while play in the ocean solo ..one of my scarier moments). And what a great picture - you guys look so happy!

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  11. Wow, what a terrifying experience that must have been! I love the picture and can just imagine what fun you had in the dingy until it nearly took you out to sea...thank goodness all's well that ends well.

    I'm so far behind in reading posts but I'll catch up eventually...off to the next :-)

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