... and that leads me on to; Cameras.

I realised that while doing the last post, I still have the cameras that those pictures were taken with.

Both of the cameras were, although nominally, family cameras, it was mostly Dad who used them. Very occasionally, Mam would be entrusted with taking a photo if it was required that Dad was in the picture.

I can remember the first time I was allowed to take a picture. It would have been 1976 and we were on holiday in London. The obligatory trip to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard saw me shoved to the front of the crown and a disembodied arm followed me, This arm shoved the camera into my hand and I took a photo of the approaching Welsh Guards.

I don't have the actual photograph but I do recall scanning it but can't now find the scanned pic.

It may have been for my birthday that year, or maybe the following year, that Mark, my brother, bought me a camera for my birthday. It was a Polaroid Land Camera.

This huge big thing used film which came in a box like cartridge and only took nine pictures. Once taken, the picture had to be pulled out of the side of the camera then left for a few minutes before removing the covering film. If you hesitated even slightly in pulling, you would be left with a white line down the middle of your photo. Likewise if you left the backing film on to long the photo would be black or if taken off to quickly, the photo would be white. I never got the opportunity to spoil many photo's as my pocket money didn't often stretch to buying the film.

This camera always languished in the bottom of my wardrobe and it was not until recent years that I took it out of it's box to discover that I'd left the batteries in that last time I'd used it and the whole thing had turned into a green chemical smelling lump.

It was many years before I owned another camera and I had this one stolen in a burglary.

I now swap and change between three different cameras, depending upon where I am or what I'm doing. My skill at photography is still crap, but I try.

Like me, my Dad kept his first camera, a Kodak Box Brownie. It was made some time around 1947 and he came by it because he swapped it for 2lbs of sugar.

I don't know if he bought his next, and final camera, a Kodak Brownie 127, but he kept it too. I have them both.

Apparently, it is still possible to get films for these two cameras so I must give them a go. I suppose that if I do, I will be in the same boat as my Dad. When he used the camera, picture taking was an event in its own right, film being expensive and not to be wasted. This is diametrically opposed to digital photography. My Olympus, on which the photo below is taken on has a 4gig memory card. I can blast away with impunity. That wouldn't have done for Dad.

My Dad's cameras in the middle.