Digital Dilution & Delight

I’m alone now in the house in Caunes. The week before last there were 10 of us, last week just 2, and now….just me. The transition week was good. Carole and I lunched out, breakfasted on the terrace, swam, gardened and explored a little. Now, though, it is just me and my various projects. It is nearly 4 weeks before friends and family return.

The list of things I want to do is enormous….but sitting in the shade, reading the new Hilary Mantel book is one of them, so it’s not all going to be hard work.

I began sorting through the already outrageous number of photos of the children that I have been dutifully loading onto the lap top each day, and I wondered what on earth will happen to the thousands of digital images that already exist of our 4 year old grandsons, our one year old and little 3 month old Izzie. I am quite organised and have always made up an annual photo book through one of those on line services each year. It has come to be an expected Christmas gift for each branch of the family. So there is a hard copy of holidays, celebrations and family events somewhere on the shelves of our children’s and grandchildren’s homes.

Sifting through the 1470 images I have saved on the lap top since May 15, I thought about the very few surviving images of my family when I was a child. We have boxes and books of fading black and white family photos….but all 4 of us, together, not so many. In fact, there are only 2 photos of my parents actually with my brother and I.

Here they are:

Joy and Mike, with me as a 4 year old and my baby brother Kev.....sitting on a horse hair stuffed 1940s sofa, with a very 1950s nifty little clip on tray for your tea, on the arm. This would have been taken in 1959.

This one shows us with me at about 25 and little brother at 21, so, taken in about 1980. Mum died in 1983

How times change.                              

These dated images are precious to me, and I do wonder if this digital age, whilst giving us so much pleasure with the ease of capturing moments in time does dilute the importance of those captured and remembered moments.

However, without the wonders of digital photography, the following photo would not  exist. It was taken by my brother, and tampered with by me. It shows Mark and I when we got married, with his parents on the left and mine on the right. We married 9 years after my mother died.....she does look a little ghostly, and the straight edge of her dress is a tell tale sign of tampering......but I still love the photo.

I expect I shall ponder about all sorts of things, whilst on my own here for the next few weeks.