Telephones & Cameras

3 generations now gone and just a small box full of photographs. And so I put the phone away. It was so beautiful.

The telephone was something women used. We had one phone plugged into the wall in the hallway. I only ever used it to say hello to my Irish Granny, my English granny lived next door. The grand men were all dead by the time I was born. I have no memory of ever seeing my father use the telephone. He must have done, but I don’t recall.

I do have a memory of seeing (and hearing) my mother on the phone, and remember vividly her trying to catch my attention to “Ring the doorbell” so that she could find an excuse to get off it when trapped for too long by it. Assertive she was not, God rest her soul.

In 1990, By the time I was 14, I used the phone more: to talk to friends, make arrangements with them and book in babysitting and car washing clients. There was no money unless we earned it.

Though the mobile phone had been invented, it was still a luxury item, before becoming more widespread by the end of that decade. This meant that (though I experienced the occasional shout of ‘get off the phone’) mealtimes, walks, car journeys, train journeys, visits with friend, sitting bored in the living room while dad played the piano and mum read scripture, doing wheelies with the BMX off planks of wood precariously balanced on some of dads bricks were all phone-less activities.

Phones did not intrude into our lives the way they do now. And, of course, I don’t really mean ‘phones’. We not suffer today solely from a problem of increased conversation. I mean artificiality. Artificiality dominates our lives, and we have let it. I have let it.

I sat with my family at a beach bar last night. We ate at a restaurant on Plage du Dèbarquement where celebrations take place annually on that day commemorating the arrival of the allied forces on 15th August 1944 during operation Dragoon. Celebrations now include an amazing fireworks display across the bay, a beach disco, the carrying of torch lanterns along the pier and the signing of La Marseillaise (which although I disapprove of, was quite wonderful to hear sung by a people unified under a shared vision). When we first began coming here we thought the celebrations were in honour of Our Lady until we learned a little local history.

The evening was joyful, full of families and couples young and old. Unlike nearby St Tropez, there was not an excess of selfie taking and plastic faces. There were phones, sure, but they did not seem to be too intrusive.

I began the evening taking some pictures as we have become used to doing.