Sunday 21stJuly

Strange, when looking back every summer seemed full of sunshine, and the photo’s don’t lie, at least not the ones we took back then – you know, real ones – those bits of very glossy paper with white borders, about 3 inches by four.   The photos’ from my Mum and Dad’s honeymoon are even smaller and a brown-grey, but very clear and bright.  They were taken with a box Brownie, when you had to hold the camera really steady as the slow aperture clunked shut.  I had a Leica half-frame camera that was my pride and joy, and on which I became something of an expert, working out the light, and the timing of the shot before carefully clicking the lens open.  You took a lot less pictures in those days, and I for one tried to compose the shot, avoiding lamp-posts sticking out of people’s heads, or cutting them off at the forehead, or losing their feet.  And I tried still to make the pictures look natural; I hated those posed-for photos.  And of course I hated flash, so I tried to take pictures in full sunshine – hence the remembrance of sunny days.  See, the camera doesn’t lie – the sun was always shining.

Now with photo-shop, and camera’s on your phone with auto-focus and auto-exposure I cannot even be bothered, hurriedly taking a picture now and then and barely looking at them again.  And nowadays it doesn’t matter if the sun was shining because you can always lighten the computer image up, or add a bit more contrast – making every day sunny for future generations I suppose.

But now photo-record or not, no-one can claim we had no sunny days in 2013, we have had two weeks of glorious sunshine, strange thing is I don’t think I have taken a single photo.   So, if I have no record will I remember it, or will I next year complain that yet again we have no summers anymore.  I’d better get the camera out quick before the clouds return and normal gloomy service is resumed.