The Moment Frozen
There was something about the way the woman swayed gently as she walked towards us across the dimly lit floor of the pub that suggested she was well practised at the art of disguising how much she'd had to drink. Just the slightest hint betrayed the likelihood she'd been to the bar a couple of times more than we had; no more than that. Dave is pretty much teetotal because he says he's allergic to alcohol and only allows himself a single pint of a black stuff when we go to Twickenham for the rugby internationals. I'm not averse to the odd pint, but I can't remember the last time I followed it up with a second one, so while I'd have probably been staggering about in a zig-zag fashion, he'd have been lying face down on the floor and asking to be taken home. In each hand she held a brown paper bag containing a lukewarm pasty, the final leftovers from the gathering. "There's always a few left at the end - I'd have made sure they were all gone earlier than this if I were in charge," she announced with not the slightest hint of a slur. "Here you go." It would serve me well for lunch on Saturday while Ali was at work, I thought. I've no idea who our go-between was, but the pasty was the final present from the man we'd come to say farewell to.
Sometimes, maybe once or twice in a lifetime the sudden departure of a public figure is shared worldwide and everything stands still for a moment or two. We remember exactly where we were, who we were with and what we were doing during the moment frozen in time. Some people I've heard refer to these as the "Kennedy" moments. I wasn't born when the events in Dallas took place, but I remember so clearly waking up at the house of my then in-laws in Preston in the north of England and finding everyone gaping silently at a television set showing a tunnel in Paris with the wreckage of a big black Mercedes dashed against a dark wall. In the 1990's I was in my own tornado blown tunnel, a young father trying to find the best version of himself for his two small children; a young husband struggling to cope with the trials of an already failing marriage; a young man who'd gone wrong somewhere before and now found himself trapped in a dead end job that rewarded little, neither financially nor spiritually. Events in the lives of the great and the good largely passed us by as we did our best to keep our heads above water. There was an interview on the television that gripped the nation, yet we barely registered it; a repeated comment in the office about "three in the marriage right from the start" didn't even raise an eyebrow. And then one afternoon Princess Diana was in Truro, visiting a drug rehabilitation centre just along the road from the firm of land agents where I worked. We stood in the staff car park, dutifully waiting for the entourage to come past. I really wasn't that bothered, but reflected that at least we'd been unchained from our desks for half an hour longer than usual. "What's all the fuss? She's only a square's daughter," boomed the surviving founding partner, a man we thought almost as aristocratic as the royals themselves. I think he meant "squire" rather than "square," but that's how he spoke. Whether he really meant that or it was his attempt at humour I was never certain, but he wasn't impressed that the police had made him park somewhere down the road rather than let him through. Eventually a huge limousine crept along the road past us and for a few fleeting seconds we saw her, and in those moments I was stunned; cast under a spell in fact. I hadn't been prepared for the movie star looks and the smile that almost melted the granite gateposts at the entrance to the car park. I'd like to tell you that for the briefest second I caught her eye, but of course I didn't. Suddenly I understood the mania of the previous fifteen years that until then had completely eluded me. I've never seen another human who exuded such radiance. That smile. It hit me again like a hammer blow on that late summer morning when we heard the news and the country went into mourning. I still see that smile - another frozen moment in fact. Some things just stay with you.
There are other events that only affect a family, or a circle of friends. I was photographing the remains of this Laurel tree after we'd walked down from the freezing cold summit of Pico Ruivo, Madeira's highest mountain when the phone sounded in my pocket. It was Dave with some bad news. Les had been found at his home by the police, who'd had to break in because he wasn't answering anyone's messages. He'd been dead for some time - a heart attack was the culprit it seemed; ironic for a man with such a big heart. Seventy really doesn't seem that old anymore. I'd come to know him through the workplace, and in the wider world during the last few years we moved at the peripheries of a group of friends that he'd grown up with. We hadn't worked directly together, but with someone like Les that didn't matter. Warm, gentle, kind, hilarious and loved by so many of his colleagues he was one of those rare people who transcended the norms of mutual respect in a place that employed well over a thousand staff. In all of the years I worked there, only a tiny number of people seemed to garner such universal approval from their workmates. The students adored him too - he was an IT support tutor - often interrupting my workflow with a spreadsheet problem he wanted me to look at. Because it was Les, I never minded the intrusion. "You're a treasure," he'd always say as I explained my solution to him. People would just smile if you mentioned him. "What's he like?" they would giggle as they remembered something daft he'd said or did just the other day, no doubt that with famous mischievous twinkle in his eye as he did so. Les had a habit of making people feel at ease. One afternoon he appeared at the door of the office I'd just been unwillingly promoted into and found me peering miserably into my screen. "What the f**k you doing in here?" he frowned, before characteristically breaking into a big trademark grin. It was the first time I'd laughed all day. I remembered the time we'd finally managed to persuade him to turn up for a Sunday morning staff football match after years of trying, the first time he'd played in about forty years, so he told us. When he scored a goal there was a bout of unabashed man hugging of the kind usually only reserved for the professional game. We talked about that game for years, long after all the other ones had been mostly forgotten. Dave later told me Les had played at county level as a teenager, and then for a local rugby club well into adulthood. Some of the stories Dave tells about the naughty side of Les from those rugby tours are best left unwritten, no matter how funny they are - besides which I wouldn't do them justice. I never quite get the full thread of exactly what happened because he's always helpless with laughter at the memory well before getting to the end of the anecdote. Sport aside Les was a very gifted artist, winning the school prize every year, always encouraged my burgeoning love for landscape photography. What makes things all the more sad is that he was alone at the end. He wasn't quite as beautiful as the Princess of Wales - almost, but not quite, although a passing resemblance to Paul Newman in his youth was mentioned in the eulogy and he unarguably exuded a certain radiance. His fabled orange perma-tan was legendary among his friends for starters.
The funeral was last week. Dave and Gareth, who'd grown up with him were among the coffin bearers. Henry delivered a moving speech about the "dear sweet boy" who'd made him feel so welcome on his first day at his new school after moving down from Yorkshire and had remained friends with him for more than fifty years. Tim, with tears in his eyes and a contagious lump in his throat faltered through the final lines of "This Is My Cornwall." He only just managed to complete the song. Ali and I, who only knew him for the last twenty years of his life croaked the words to the bits we knew. Friendships that endured a lifetime for those who shared them. In the pub we chewed thoughtfully on pasties and remembered the Les we loved with former colleagues who'd long since retired. And then the lady under the influence weaved towards us with the second round of pasties. It seemed rude not to - especially when Les had sent them to us.
And so it's the memory of Les I will forever cherish whenever I look at this picture and return to that frozen moment; the feeling of emptiness that a dearly held friend and a lovable rogue had gone from the world. This picture will always be his. Ali was silent when I told her what the message said. "He was lovely," she whispered. We barely spoke as we continued our descent, each of us lost in quiet sadness on the lonely mountain path. I'd originally edited this in black and white, but Les was a colourful man. I think he'd have liked the silver and green against the misty mountainside. Rest in peace Les - I'll keep sharing pictures with you mate.
The Moment Frozen
There was something about the way the woman swayed gently as she walked towards us across the dimly lit floor of the pub that suggested she was well practised at the art of disguising how much she'd had to drink. Just the slightest hint betrayed the likelihood she'd been to the bar a couple of times more than we had; no more than that. Dave is pretty much teetotal because he says he's allergic to alcohol and only allows himself a single pint of a black stuff when we go to Twickenham for the rugby internationals. I'm not averse to the odd pint, but I can't remember the last time I followed it up with a second one, so while I'd have probably been staggering about in a zig-zag fashion, he'd have been lying face down on the floor and asking to be taken home. In each hand she held a brown paper bag containing a lukewarm pasty, the final leftovers from the gathering. "There's always a few left at the end - I'd have made sure they were all gone earlier than this if I were in charge," she announced with not the slightest hint of a slur. "Here you go." It would serve me well for lunch on Saturday while Ali was at work, I thought. I've no idea who our go-between was, but the pasty was the final present from the man we'd come to say farewell to.
Sometimes, maybe once or twice in a lifetime the sudden departure of a public figure is shared worldwide and everything stands still for a moment or two. We remember exactly where we were, who we were with and what we were doing during the moment frozen in time. Some people I've heard refer to these as the "Kennedy" moments. I wasn't born when the events in Dallas took place, but I remember so clearly waking up at the house of my then in-laws in Preston in the north of England and finding everyone gaping silently at a television set showing a tunnel in Paris with the wreckage of a big black Mercedes dashed against a dark wall. In the 1990's I was in my own tornado blown tunnel, a young father trying to find the best version of himself for his two small children; a young husband struggling to cope with the trials of an already failing marriage; a young man who'd gone wrong somewhere before and now found himself trapped in a dead end job that rewarded little, neither financially nor spiritually. Events in the lives of the great and the good largely passed us by as we did our best to keep our heads above water. There was an interview on the television that gripped the nation, yet we barely registered it; a repeated comment in the office about "three in the marriage right from the start" didn't even raise an eyebrow. And then one afternoon Princess Diana was in Truro, visiting a drug rehabilitation centre just along the road from the firm of land agents where I worked. We stood in the staff car park, dutifully waiting for the entourage to come past. I really wasn't that bothered, but reflected that at least we'd been unchained from our desks for half an hour longer than usual. "What's all the fuss? She's only a square's daughter," boomed the surviving founding partner, a man we thought almost as aristocratic as the royals themselves. I think he meant "squire" rather than "square," but that's how he spoke. Whether he really meant that or it was his attempt at humour I was never certain, but he wasn't impressed that the police had made him park somewhere down the road rather than let him through. Eventually a huge limousine crept along the road past us and for a few fleeting seconds we saw her, and in those moments I was stunned; cast under a spell in fact. I hadn't been prepared for the movie star looks and the smile that almost melted the granite gateposts at the entrance to the car park. I'd like to tell you that for the briefest second I caught her eye, but of course I didn't. Suddenly I understood the mania of the previous fifteen years that until then had completely eluded me. I've never seen another human who exuded such radiance. That smile. It hit me again like a hammer blow on that late summer morning when we heard the news and the country went into mourning. I still see that smile - another frozen moment in fact. Some things just stay with you.
There are other events that only affect a family, or a circle of friends. I was photographing the remains of this Laurel tree after we'd walked down from the freezing cold summit of Pico Ruivo, Madeira's highest mountain when the phone sounded in my pocket. It was Dave with some bad news. Les had been found at his home by the police, who'd had to break in because he wasn't answering anyone's messages. He'd been dead for some time - a heart attack was the culprit it seemed; ironic for a man with such a big heart. Seventy really doesn't seem that old anymore. I'd come to know him through the workplace, and in the wider world during the last few years we moved at the peripheries of a group of friends that he'd grown up with. We hadn't worked directly together, but with someone like Les that didn't matter. Warm, gentle, kind, hilarious and loved by so many of his colleagues he was one of those rare people who transcended the norms of mutual respect in a place that employed well over a thousand staff. In all of the years I worked there, only a tiny number of people seemed to garner such universal approval from their workmates. The students adored him too - he was an IT support tutor - often interrupting my workflow with a spreadsheet problem he wanted me to look at. Because it was Les, I never minded the intrusion. "You're a treasure," he'd always say as I explained my solution to him. People would just smile if you mentioned him. "What's he like?" they would giggle as they remembered something daft he'd said or did just the other day, no doubt that with famous mischievous twinkle in his eye as he did so. Les had a habit of making people feel at ease. One afternoon he appeared at the door of the office I'd just been unwillingly promoted into and found me peering miserably into my screen. "What the f**k you doing in here?" he frowned, before characteristically breaking into a big trademark grin. It was the first time I'd laughed all day. I remembered the time we'd finally managed to persuade him to turn up for a Sunday morning staff football match after years of trying, the first time he'd played in about forty years, so he told us. When he scored a goal there was a bout of unabashed man hugging of the kind usually only reserved for the professional game. We talked about that game for years, long after all the other ones had been mostly forgotten. Dave later told me Les had played at county level as a teenager, and then for a local rugby club well into adulthood. Some of the stories Dave tells about the naughty side of Les from those rugby tours are best left unwritten, no matter how funny they are - besides which I wouldn't do them justice. I never quite get the full thread of exactly what happened because he's always helpless with laughter at the memory well before getting to the end of the anecdote. Sport aside Les was a very gifted artist, winning the school prize every year, always encouraged my burgeoning love for landscape photography. What makes things all the more sad is that he was alone at the end. He wasn't quite as beautiful as the Princess of Wales - almost, but not quite, although a passing resemblance to Paul Newman in his youth was mentioned in the eulogy and he unarguably exuded a certain radiance. His fabled orange perma-tan was legendary among his friends for starters.
The funeral was last week. Dave and Gareth, who'd grown up with him were among the coffin bearers. Henry delivered a moving speech about the "dear sweet boy" who'd made him feel so welcome on his first day at his new school after moving down from Yorkshire and had remained friends with him for more than fifty years. Tim, with tears in his eyes and a contagious lump in his throat faltered through the final lines of "This Is My Cornwall." He only just managed to complete the song. Ali and I, who only knew him for the last twenty years of his life croaked the words to the bits we knew. Friendships that endured a lifetime for those who shared them. In the pub we chewed thoughtfully on pasties and remembered the Les we loved with former colleagues who'd long since retired. And then the lady under the influence weaved towards us with the second round of pasties. It seemed rude not to - especially when Les had sent them to us.
And so it's the memory of Les I will forever cherish whenever I look at this picture and return to that frozen moment; the feeling of emptiness that a dearly held friend and a lovable rogue had gone from the world. This picture will always be his. Ali was silent when I told her what the message said. "He was lovely," she whispered. We barely spoke as we continued our descent, each of us lost in quiet sadness on the lonely mountain path. I'd originally edited this in black and white, but Les was a colourful man. I think he'd have liked the silver and green against the misty mountainside. Rest in peace Les - I'll keep sharing pictures with you mate.