A nice photograph
Uncle John came round for dinner tonight and brought this photo.
It made me smile.
It’s James, me, Micky the Fish and Jamie having a piss beside the A14 after a day at Newmarket races. And in a bizarre way, I think it sums the day up perfectly.
It was one of those bloke days out where the male species – without guidance from the female – do some bonding. We buy each other beer, talk about football, gawp at tabloids, and fritter money away on horses we know nothing about. Every minute brings the opportunity for a one-liner, an anecdote about sexual conquests, or another drink.
It’s not sophisticated, it’s not big, and it certainly isn’t clever. But it is fun. This photo rekindles all those hazy memories of drunken hi-jinx.
Perhaps the nice thing about this photograph is its tangibility. In a world where not having a camera on a phone seems daft, so many of our snaps remain on memory cards forever. They become easy to ignore; filed away on stamp-sized gadgetry, never to evoke feeling again.
This photograph will no doubt end up in a box in a cupboard in a room somewhere. But for the next few weeks it’ll move around the house, become a topic of conversation when people pop round, and make me smile when I don’t feel like smiling.
Wonderful things, photographs.