6th November
Nah ...I won't try to pull the wool over your eyes. This was the afternoon of the 5th and I'd actually found this spent rocket lying flat on the ground. In the age of instant gratification people haven't the patience to wait until 5th November to let off their fireworks, as was always done in my day. Distant pops and crackles are heard during the evenings for several weeks in advance, and the nights on either side of the 5th are uproarious with pyrotechnics. There are lesser repeat performances at Christmas and New Year, with distant, isolated whizz-bangs to be heard every time some clot has his birthday and thinks everyone else for a square mile around is interested. As for deliberately "posing" the rocket ...well, Robert Doisneau's famous "kiss at the Hotel de Ville" is now acknowledged to have been fraudulent insofar as it was offered as "candid", and I don't know how anyone can believe that the "iconic" Life cover of the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on VJ Day was not a set-up. All those "decisive moment" chaps were charlatans ...businessmen as much as photographers. You can't blame them I suppose: we all have to earn a living, and taking snaps beats working. They just had the brains to come up with a good con-trick.
6th November
Nah ...I won't try to pull the wool over your eyes. This was the afternoon of the 5th and I'd actually found this spent rocket lying flat on the ground. In the age of instant gratification people haven't the patience to wait until 5th November to let off their fireworks, as was always done in my day. Distant pops and crackles are heard during the evenings for several weeks in advance, and the nights on either side of the 5th are uproarious with pyrotechnics. There are lesser repeat performances at Christmas and New Year, with distant, isolated whizz-bangs to be heard every time some clot has his birthday and thinks everyone else for a square mile around is interested. As for deliberately "posing" the rocket ...well, Robert Doisneau's famous "kiss at the Hotel de Ville" is now acknowledged to have been fraudulent insofar as it was offered as "candid", and I don't know how anyone can believe that the "iconic" Life cover of the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on VJ Day was not a set-up. All those "decisive moment" chaps were charlatans ...businessmen as much as photographers. You can't blame them I suppose: we all have to earn a living, and taking snaps beats working. They just had the brains to come up with a good con-trick.