Poloroid faces

Face of the week (two even).

Just for a change this week the camera is pointing at myself and my sister. This picture is well over three decades old and was taken by my old Poloroid Instamatic. I got it as a Christmas present one year. I had a hard time saving up pocket money for the really expensive film cartridges and flash plug-ins. Usually my mum would treat me to some free cartridges when we went on holiday or at Christmas. So I eventually filled my photo album with either festive pics or ones like this one on our hols. The dingy you see us using was notorious in our family history. A lot of our summer adventures took us to Devon or Wales. On arriving at our holiday destination, the first and most vital family mission was locating the nearest Betting Shop to our digs. My dad was a terror for the gee-gees (horse-racing). Waiting outside the bookies was always a holiday low point but he usually made up for it during the rest of the day. One year he actually won £20 pounds. With the winnings he bought the dingy in the picture. We had a lot of fun in that dingy. Unfortunately, it also almost killed me. On holiday with our extended family my younger cousin and I were paddling in a bay thinking we were quite safe. The tide had other ideas and swept us out into deep water and deep trouble. My cousin was too young to row and my paddling was mainly for show. I was certainly no match for the tide. We didn't really understand how much danger we were in. My uncle tried to swim out to us and it seemed like we were going out faster than he could swim. I think he eventually got a hand on the trailing tow rope. And we were saved. Phew. Maybe I was like the cat with nine lives. I know the dingy incident wasn't the first one I'd chalked off. It didn't stop us from using the dingy again but from there on in, well, we were a lot more cautious. Eventually, after a few years, the trusty, and almost fateful vessel started to get punctures. In the course of repairing the damage my dad managed to superglue his fingers together, which was careless, but not half as careless as supergluing our dingy to the floor. Ahh... Happy Days.