God Save the Slides

Despite some rainy, chilly weather, I took a long walk yesterday morning back to Camden Market to look at more old photographic slides. Just as I was leaving the last time, I found a second dealer with a bin I only barely had time to look through. It was the one with "Trish!" in it, as well as the Regent Street photo, so I felt it deserved closer scrutiny.

This time I brought my viewer and looked at every slide in that bin, which took about an hour. A lot of them were birds and flowers, which don't interest me -- they say nothing about time or place. (Of course I take lots of bird and flower photos, but it's different when they reflect my own experiences!) But I found another 50 or so worth bringing home, and I'll get some of them scanned this week.

Because I was sitting in the slide dealer's stall, I didn't actually watch the coronation. I saw snippets of it later. The weather was about as bad as it could be, but it looks like the crowds still turned out, which was good to see. I like Charles -- I think his heart is in the right place and he has some very sensible interests and views, like his appreciation for ecology and architectural preservation.

In Belsize Park I passed a street party where a handful of hardy souls had gathered to watch the ceremony on a large monitor.

(There were people sitting on the other side of the truck too, where there was a second screen.)

I passed buildings with bunting and saw other indications of national pride...

...like this boxer outside Waitrose, wearing his official Union Jack bow tie.

Of course there were some naysayers too.

Soon after I got home, our new hob (stove top, range, whatever you want to call it) finally arrived! Woo hoo! Dave is so happy, and it does look much nicer than our old one. Our landlords and management company had believed for weeks that it had already been installed, because of some kind of record-keeping mix-up at the appliance dealer's. (Or so we were told.) After we protested and made clear that we still had the old one, they slowly ironed everything out.

And here it is, complete with last night's dinner, Coronation Quiche -- which Dave made from the official royal recipe. It was really good. I had two pieces as I watched "Lady in Cement," a groovy Frank Sinatra movie from the late '60s that I love despite its sexism, homophobia and tortured plot. It's the second of two movies featuring Sinatra as a wise-cracking detective in Miami, and the banter between characters is pretty entertaining. Don't be offended by the film's shortcomings; just laugh through them. That's my advice.

I also managed to do a little gardening yesterday, despite the rain. I repotted a few things, including dividing some root-bound mint and planting the halves in separate pots -- just as I'd done for another pot of mint a week or two ago. So now we have four pots of mint, a mixture of peppermint and Moroccan mint. Dave is exasperated that I used four pots rather than throwing some of it out, but why discard perfectly good mint?

Mysteries, Medical and Otherwise

Not sure what happened at our Domino's pizza on the high street to require that it be cordoned off with hazard tape. At first I thought some type of crime might have occurred, but there's nothing in the news. Maybe they just got a paint job or a new sign or something.

Well, yesterday wound up being far more exciting than any of us intended. Right after I clicked "publish" on my last post, Dave left for school -- and within minutes came home again. He'd been complaining of pain in his abdomen, which with his Crohn's is not all that unusual, but it was worse than normal and he didn't feel he could go to work. He has some untreated hernias and the pain seemed to be associated with those, so in an abundance of caution we went to the emergency room (or A&E, as it's called here in England, for "accident and emergency").

We were both concerned that the hernias may have become constricted or his bowels otherwise blocked. I went to the hospital with him and we sat together until about 11 a.m. By then he'd been seen by a nurse and sent for a CAT scan. I went on to work while he waited for the scan results.

This is a painting in the emergency department. Is that not the ugliest thing you've ever seen? There's actually a lot of nice art at this hospital -- but this piece, not so much.

Anyway, poor Dave wound up waiting around until 4 p.m., when the doctor finally told him there was no visible obstruction. His blood tests showed slightly elevated levels of inflammation. The doctor offered to keep him overnight to treat him for the pain, but Dave elected to come home. He seems better today.

Crohn's -- the adventure never ends.

I, meanwhile, had a busy half-day at work, with everyone checking out books for the long weekend. I finished the inventory up through the 800s, still with just a handful of missing materials. Most of the middle schoolers are away on trips next week, so I should be able to do a lot more then.

On the way home I passed this wall of wisteria, which smelled heavenly.

We are both looking forward to yet another long weekend -- we have Monday off in celebration of today's coronation, which we will probably watch on TV, because how often do you get to see something like that? But I'm not going to join the crowds in Westminster, especially as the weather might be iffy. I feel a little bad for Charles and Camilla because there seems to be a distinct lack of public enthusiasm, but I suppose they're laughing all the way to the bank, as the saying goes. (We did put up a coronation display in the library and yesterday our school cafeteria served its take on "coronation quiche," so we're doing our part!)

Bomb Shelter

I passed this place on my walk to Camden Market last weekend. I knew this unusual-looking building had to have some kind of history, and after some Googling I learned that it's the Belsize Park Deep Shelter, built during World War II to shelter Londoners during bombing raids. Photos of the interior and a diagram of the whole facility can be seen here. Most of it's underground, obviously. You never know what's beneath your feet in this town.

More recently it has been used by a company that specializes in secure storage of business records.

And speaking of business records, my blog came in handy yesterday at work. We were trying to figure out why a certain missing book was checked out to one of our library accounts back in early March. I looked at my blog to see what was happening then, and realized it was the day of our Drop Everything and Read promotion. We finally figured out that the book had been put on a cart and taken up to the high school for student use during that event -- and it never came back.

This is one of the reasons I keep a blog. I have a terrible memory, but if I record the little incidents of my days, it helps me figure things out when questions arise. (It's also part of the reason I've kept a journal since childhood, though the blog is much easier to search.)

This mystery plant has appeared in our garden. We didn't intentionally grow it. I thought it was a foxglove, but then it sent up this long stalk with a weird, fibrous-looking flowerhead. It turns out I was right -- it is a foxglove, and in fact I think it's the only one we've got this year. But who knew their early flowers look so strange?

Problem Slides

My compulsion to rescue old slides from oblivion extends especially to those that are damaged or deteriorating. Why this is, I have no idea. My dad had a very strong rescue impulse, mostly where animals and children were concerned. I have the same impulse for animals, houseplants and old pictures (and other stuff too). I guess it's hereditary.

Anyway, here are some examples of slides I got at Camden Market that needed some extra help.

Let's take the ones above on the right, both from 1978. I found them on the concrete floor beneath the slide box in the shop I was visiting, and they'd been trampled and begrimed and dampened by water from somewhere. I asked the proprietor if I could have them for free and he said yes. 

I could tell they were landscapes, but it wasn't until I got them home, cleaned them carefully with a barely moist Q-tip, let them dry out and had them scanned that I could see the images:

Neither one would win a prize, and I would never have bought them had they been pristine, but it was fun to salvage them from near-oblivion. Wonder if there's a story behind that bench?

Now let's look at the slide on the left in the top photo. It bears no date, it's an unconventional size and it's very dark. I can barely see through it when I hold it up to the light. Only when I point my slide viewer directly into the sun can I make out this image:

As you can see, the slide is also incredibly discolored. Sometimes slide film just doesn't age well, perhaps because of lousy processing.

I had it scanned, and although the woman at the scanning shop assured me she could cope with the unusual square format, what I got was a cropped version of the photo. I color-corrected it and wound up with this:

Looks like some kind of panto, or a children's theatre production. Peter Pan, maybe? The girl and the "mouse" look skeptical; the other two are totally into it. I wish I had the full frame, but maybe I can get that in a future scan.

Finally, there's this slide:

I'm holding it against the sky so you can see how dark it is. It's from 1968, and as you can see it's labeled "Austria -- Town of Glass Manufacture."

Here's the uncorrected scanned version:

I did some Googling and figured out this is the town of Rattenberg, which apparently is indeed known for its glass. Here's the corrected version, which I made into a black-and-white image because the color was so weak and wonky:

And that's about as good as this particular picture of Rattenberg is going to get. Incidentally, here's the same street today.

It can be a challenge to salvage pictures that are near death, but I enjoy it!

A New Bunch of Rescued Slides

Time for a look at some of the slides I salvaged from Camden Market over the weekend. I chose about 35 of the 50+ that I bought and had them scanned yesterday. Here are nine of my favorites.

This one (above) is marked "Regent Street, 1961." It's a long exposure and it's blurry, but I like the effect and the sense of action. I bought a second one with less blur and I don't like it nearly as much.

"Don, Edwin, Karl, Norman, Sandra: pitch & putting." (No date)

Again, it's blurry, but I love the joyful energy.

May 16, 1989: "Puig Major from L'Ofre -- Tom."

Puig Major is a mountain peak on the Spanish island of Majorca.

Sept. 18, 1997: "Karachi beach camels."

Some of these slides really aren't very old. I bought one from as late as 2010. I'm surprised anyone was shooting slide film at that point, but I guess it's hard to teach an old photographer new tricks.

Sept. 21, 1997: "Simikot children"

Simikot is in Nepal. I bought several slides taken by someone named K. D. Halliday of a trek through the Himalayas. (The Karachi beach camels is Halliday's shot, too.) These little girls look like they're trying to cross all their fingers. Are they wishing the travelers good luck?

June, 1977: There's no information other than the date, so I'm not sure where this is.

"Christmas 1961, at Moor Park. Trish!"

I love this picture. It might be my favorite of the bunch. Moor Park is in northwest London. This picture as well as the ones of Regent Street and Sandra et al above have the same handwriting on them, so probably came from the same photographer or family.

There's no information at all on this slide. But the building to the right in the background says "Gaspinger Hof," which is still a hotel in Gerlos, Austria -- and the car at right has an Austria sticker. So that's where we are. Here's the same view today, but without the parade, obviously. I would guess this pic is from the 1960s?

August 15, 1968: "Bremer Hütte, 2,413 meters" -- in addition to the Asian ones I mentioned above, this is also a Halliday slide, as well as the one of Puig Major. The Bremer Hütte is in Gschnitz, Austria, and has been enlarged a couple of times since this photo was taken. Now it sleeps 73 guests and has its own electric plant!

I'll put all the slides I got scanned on Flickr and when I do I'll link the album so you can see the rest, if you're interested.

A commenter wondered recently why I feel compelled to save other people's pictures. To me, a photo -- a good one, anyway -- has cultural value. Maybe it makes us laugh or feel something, or it shows a time and place long past. Often when an everyday photographer dies their photos get discarded, and I don't fault anyone for that -- it's hard to keep everything. In my own family we have boxes and boxes of pictures. But I hate the thought of these captured moments vanishing forever, so I try to salvage some here and there and preserve them digitally. I see it as a kind of public service.

See earlier posts of rescued slides here and here.

What's Blooming Now

I didn't do a whole lot yesterday. I finished "American Dirt," which I enjoyed, and I caught up on some other reading. I cleaned the kitchen cabinets. I took the dog to the cemetery, where we heard but didn't see the turaco. And the avocado lost one more leaf to the rampaging squirrel.

Oh -- I did have some insight into that situation, though. Last year, the avocado sat out all summer beneath the walnut tree, and as a result, bits of broken walnut shell dropped into its pot. I left the shells there, thinking they would gradually break down and serve as a kind of mulch. But of course things like that don't break down indoors like they do outside, so there was still plenty of walnut debris in the pot -- which perhaps caused the rampaging squirrel to deduce that there were walnuts to be had in the avocado tree.

Yesterday I skimmed off the walnut debris and added a layer of fresh compost atop the soil in the pot. Maybe now the squirrels will lose interest.

Anyway, there's lots going on in the garden right now. Our camassia lilies (top) have been very happy this year as we've had lots of rain and they love damp ground.

We have a white bluebell that I don't ever remember seeing before...

...as well as lots of "bog standard" (as the British say) blue ones.

We have spotted lungwort...

...and aquilegia...

...and candytuft.

Today it's back to work!

Shirtless Steele and Some Old Slides

Another nice day yesterday, though not quite as nice as the day before. A bit cooler and cloudier. Still, plenty of opportunity to be outside.

I spent the morning in the garden reading, followed by a walk to Camden Market. I encountered Sir Richard Steele along the way. He looks a little cold, doesn't he?

Camden was my destination because when I wandered through there last week, right before meeting Colin for one of our concerts, I saw a guy selling loose photographic slides from a big box. Well, you know I love old pictures, and rescuing them from oblivion is one of my missions in life. So yesterday I returned with lots of time and some spare change, and emerged with about 50 slides.

(Side note: I didn't try to take Olga along to the market. It's farther away than the Heath and given our big walk the day before, I thought she needed to stay home and recuperate. She didn't protest, and it felt good to walk briskly and get my heart rate up, which I can't do when I'm tethered to the dog.)

Coming back from Camden, I passed through Hampstead village and stopped at a sidewalk antique place I've passed many times. Usually I have Olga with me so pausing there isn't easy, but this time I could browse and I bought two cut-glass wine glasses that I thought Dave and I might use sometime.

I've looked through all the slides more carefully and I think about half of them are worth scanning. The slides themselves don't cost much but the scanning is an investment, since I have it done professionally. (I don't have a good slide scanner of my own.) Choosing interesting slides from a big bin of loose junk in an open-air market is a challenge -- I have to hold them up to the light and squint and do my best to assess the photo. I can't always tell if it's going to be blurry or if someone's eyes are closed, and sometimes upon closer examination they're just not as interesting as I first thought.

Anyway, that was my daily excitement. I resumed reading "American Dirt" in the afternoon, and also caught up on blog-reading and responding to recent comments here, which felt good. I know I've been lagging behind!

This is another Camden Market purchase. When I showed it to Dave, he said, "Your Florida roots are showing!" And indeed, it does look like something that would be hanging from a carport in his parents' Bradenton mobile home park. But there's a purpose behind it.

Remember how a squirrel ravaged our avocado tree? I thought this shiny, flashy thing might keep it away. So I moved the avocado back outside and suspended this gizmo from the branches. The squirrel nibbled off three leaves yesterday. So much for that idea.

Still, I'm leaving the avocado outside. I think the squirrel will eventually lose interest, if it hasn't already. And if not, it will help prune our overlarge tropical plant!