First thing this morning I deposited a film at the local chemist to be developed: 24 exposures of the bank holiday outing to Lille. I am told they will be ready at the end of the day. That's fine by me. Some six hours to wait, in mild anticipation, wondering whether that neat shot of the war memorial will have come out, or whether the faces will be in focus. In the coming days the shiny prints will be organised, dated and stacked away in old shoe boxes to join others on the shelves of events and people in my life. Once I might have had to wait several days to get them back, or if I had posted the film off to one of those cut price setups, I would be wondering whether I would ever see them back. In the past significant family records have gone totally astray. No redress. All this was part of the hazard of the way things were.
I have also been looking at a photograph, taken by Roger Mayne in 1958 of that year's Aldermaston march. I am making an audio tape to accompany the Tate's "Art and the 60s" show commenting on what the photograph reveals of the mood and events of the times. When in Lille I visited an exhibition of photographs taken in China in the late 19th century by the French consul, Ernest Frandon, in what is now Chang-chou, opposite Taiwan, which was then Formosa. Here is his record of individual Chinese - artisans, and peasants, with their travelling kitchens and merchandise - meticulously posed, leaving a complete but formal record of what he saw at first hand.
The technology has changed and with it the nature of photography. Not better or worse, merely different. People are queuing up to teach me how to use a digital camera. They preach its merits: you get to see the picture to assess whether it is what you want. You feed what you have chosen straight into the computer then send off copies, prints, (I'm not sure these are even the appropriate words) to all and sundry who have immediate access to shared holidays and family jaunts. Immediacy seems to be what it's about. Pictures, chosen on the instant, available instantly, distributed instantly. Am I wrong in thinking that without the anticipated waiting time something could be lost? Would Mayne have wiped his Aldermaston march because of a moment's impatience with its simple ordinariness? Would Frandon's eye for rather staged detail have survived the rush to capture the moment?
A digital camera confronts me with that bugbear of being old: having to learn something new. There is no doubt the ageing brain finds this ever harder to do. Old domestic routines - how to cream butter and sugar to make a sponge cake, how to iron the cuffs and collars on starched shirts, how to shorten a hemline - remain clear and practical. But who does any of this any more? Who knows how to thread a sewing machine or patch a loose cover? And who cares? Today's answer is to throw out anything that develops a fault, and buy the latest, most-up-to date model.
So I have developed one or two tricks that help me remember the instructions others give me. First: I only learn a very little at a time. "Stop right there" I insist when they have scarcely begun, "that's enough to be going on with." Then I scuttle away and repeat it to myself, often speaking what they have said out loud. Second: I write things down. There are yellow Post-Its scattered throughout the house reminding me of such matters as details of batteries or ingredients, the odd but promising website. Third, I repeat a new skill and keep on repeating it until it becomes second nature. Thus, I spent days copying things I didn't want on to floppies I wouldn't keep, trying to get the routine to stick. Children, of course, only need to be shown once. And I take a daily dose of ginkgo biloba: a herb that is rumoured to help the memory. As far as I know - or can remember - there's no hard evidence yet. But I am told doctors take it. That is good enough for me.
Back to the photographs then. I lift my eyes from the keyboard and there are my school teachers seated in two neat rows, a sepia picture including many I once thought of as very aged indeed. I realise with alarm I am now much older than any of them were when they posed so long ago. Funny thing, time.
