Waikiki 1985

Since I am a product of the past century I have been known to complain about living in this 21^st century. Sometimes I must admit that some things are better in this century.

In the summer of 1985 Rosemary, our two daughters Alexandra and Hilary and I went on a trip to Hawaii.

I remember that I spent a whole day trying to find a 100% cotton Aloha shirt that was not made of rayon. I did find one (seen in the b+w photograph here) at a Liberty Store.

Because I had been hired to take photographs for a travel magazine, I never printed any of the family shots. Worse still because Rosemary was always telling me to photograph our  daughters there are many of them and few of Rosemary. And of course who shaves the barber? There are evewn fewer of me.

Thanks to an old Kodak light box, and Agfa loupe and my very good Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner these pictures will see the light of day in my blog. And, yes, I will admit some stuff is better in this century.

Hilary & Alexandra

I have opened a family file in my computer (that I will eventually transfer to an external hard drive) and I have placed all these pictures you see here and many more. Who knows if my family might not want to have a look at them in some future when I am gone. 

El que espera desespera.

He who waits despairs.

My grandmother would often say the above phrase. It plays on the fact that in Spanish to wait is esperar and to despair is to desesperar. Desesperar is close enough to the English equivalent of despair.

Since I can remember I have been waiting. As a little boy in Buenos Aires it was anxiously waiting for the 6^th of January, the Epiphany when I would put my shoes outside the door and the Three Wise Kings would bring me presents the next day. Midnight Mass seemed interminable before I could return home to see what Santa Claus had left under our tree.

There were days when a classroom period at school would never end. As I began to grow up I learned about bureaucracy and how my mother waited for passports and visas.

Many years later in the late 80s I would wait for the odd rumbling of Rosemary’s five cylinder Audi when she would return from home. I would have dinner waiting for her. This was pleasant waiting.

For those who have gotten this far I will not make you wait much longer. At least a couple of years before Rosemary died on December 9, 2020 I coined the expression initials WTD. Rosemary hated them because she knew they stood for waiting to die.

Most will give you the advice that this is pessimistic and that one must find distractions to prevent such black-cloud thoughts.

As it is now with me, when I am giving my two cats, Niño and Niña their dental treats at around 7:30 in the evening it seems like the previous, “Treats, treats!” happened a few minutes before.

When there are no financial worries, no obligations, living alone in a pandemic and the phone never rings the emptiness that confronts me takes me back to WTD.

There is some solace. One is to walk with Niño around the block on nice days or to prepare a meal  for the once (sometimes twice) a week visit by my youngest daughter Hilary.

There is the pleasant waiting of realizing that spring is almost here and I can see the new growth in my roses. Rose pruning in early March will be a nice distraction to look forward to.

Short of me suddenly getting sick I can expect a few more years of waiting between these distractions.

It is pleasantly difficult to go through my extensive files and for this red-blooded male of the 20^th century to look through my photographs of beautiful women. This is a distraction that is difficult to share in this difficult century.

I am modern enough to banter pleasantly with Air Canada flight attendants and discuss how we feel about our grandchildren. I smile and say nothing when I watch a few of these attendants walk the thin airplane aisles with little room to spare on either side. I applaud the Airline for having modified their standards. I only wonder why the male flight attendants are all young and pleasant looking.What are we waiting for to correct this anomaly?

So today I will feature Anastasia. I have written quite a few blogs about her. 

We met for our session in the best room of the infamously shabby Marble Arch Hotel. Of course I used lights. I gave few posing instructions. Anastasia seemed to know what I wanted even if I was unsure myself.

I believe these photographs will persist in my imagination and perhaps soon some other Anastasia will suddenly appear and provide me with a distraction and make me forget WTD.

There is of course that most beautiful word in Spanish that can also be a woman's name. This is esperanza. It means hope and only Spaniards would coin a word so close to despair.

When Rosemary, our two daughters, my mother and I moved to a little brick house (financed by my mother) in the outskirts of Mexico City we had a stressful life of commuting (on the dangerous Mexican Periférico freeway) in our VW to give our English classes to Mexican executives in American companies and to the hotel workers of hotels like the Camino Real.

Life was hard but we could afford to have a live-in caretaker for our daughters. It was then I began to dabble in photography. My cousin Roberto Miranda showed me his American Express card and suggested we go to American Photo Supply on Madero in downtown Mexico City to buy what I needed for a darkroom.

With that darkroom (in the bathroom of the service quarters) and with two 35mm cameras I began taking portraits of wealthy Mexicans in their homes. An executive I taught English to gave me leads and from there since I was doing something nobody else was doing the business took off.

I had a little leather-bound portfolio with sheets of black paper where I dry-mounted examples of my portrait work. One example was a narrow (cut to not show the fact that they were without clothes photograph of Rosemary and Ale who was perhaps a bit older than a year. I would have taken it in 1969 and printed it in my new darkroom perhaps in1971.

I went to Magnum frames to pick up to photographs, one for me and one for Ale. It is thisone from this blog.

I was surprised to find out there was a third framed photograph. For a bit I was confused and even noticed a vertical scratch in the photograph and that it was a tad light. Then I remembered. This photograph that has survived intact since 1971 was the very photograph from my Mexico portfolio.

As is I am sure that Alexandra Elizabeth Waterhouse-Hayward will appreciate its value.

George McWhirter - Kenneth Branagh - Patrick Reid

My daughter Hilary and I went to the Rio Theatre today to see Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. It was a lovely film and the only special effects were the showing of the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on  a movie screen in colour with the film and its protagonists in black and white. It is the kind of film that certain people of a young age might find slow. I would have perhaps liked subtitles. I may have understood about 70% of the dialogue in its Northern Ireland accent.

There is a scene in the beginning where our little boy protagonist Jude Hill (playing the part of a young Branagh) watches the unleashing of violence. The camera goes around his head in one of the finest examples of magnificent cinematography I have ever seen.

On my way home, after having enjoyed a pizza at Lombardo’s on Commercial with Hilary, and having taken her home to Burnaby, I thought about the fact that I perhaps may have not only photographed Branagh (from Belfast) but another from that city, Patrick Reid who was one of the two designers of the Canadian Maple Leaf Flag.

I was ready to write this blog when I realized that I did not know how to call a person from Belfast. I rang up my friend, the first Vancouver Poet Laureate and Irish-born George McWhirter. He was not sure if it is correct to call them Belfasters or Belfastians. Out of curiousity I asked him where he was born. Yes! He was born in Belfast.

My three blog stories on the three men are below as is a poem about Belfast by George Mc Whirter.

 Patrick Reid 

Kenneth Branagh 

George McWhirter

While now it is of no importance I can point out that Patrick Reid may have been the only Roman Catholic of the trio. All three have a magnificent sense of humour.

 The AJS, Norton & Moto Guzzi Opera (or Thunder on the Shankill)

 Down from the clouds

and Clady Circuit on the mountain,

                                                the trials at the Ulster Grand Prix,

                                                past the pubs and the churches,

the singing and the swigging, in helmets and leather,

the black-as-Satan’s suits,

                                                the divil-me-dares of 500ccs,

                                                padded circles on the insides of the knees

(those racing ringworm that let them scissor

the encased inferno of the engine

with spider-leg love),

in the lace-up boots,

accessories for the live-

accessories the riders were to us on their bikes:

AJS, Norton, Moto Guzzi,

names and frames, designs

that cloned the racer’s shape to the petrol tank,

the domed apse

                                                to the mobile basilica

we worshipped at.

Down from the High Mass of the massed start.

Down the dips of the Shankill to North-Howard Street,

                                                spurt up to the traffic lights

                                                at Northumberland and Agnes

(married at their ends, like northern

English lord and lady).  Two twists

                                                on the throttle for a scentilla of benzene.

                                                Feet down, groin eased off the pommel,

back straightened to wait, chest lifted from the petrol tank

whose bulge shook us into admiration,

                                                as dumbfoundedly, as the bust

on a woman’s body,

la Lolla’s that we nineteen-fifties teens

dreamed of fingerprinting.

We counted bikes,

counted on the AJS basso profundo,

even more on the Norton’s bass baritone

to understate its superiority, as usual,

but the Guzzi alto-tenor

                                                reamed our ears

That foreign Faronelli, 

rocked us to our gonads

with the throttle

                                                in its throat. Scarlet

threat to our boyhood loyalty

that would not hear tell

that BSAs were dull,

Royal Enfield’s extinct

background noise to the lead piston

twang of the Guzzi, piping high Cs

                                                into its exhaust.

Such Italofilia

and phobia it was, as great as our love

and fear of Italian ice-cream. 

Would the pokes from Angelo’s

                                                seduce us

into reverence

for the cone

of the Pope’s Episcopal mitre—

the Moto Guzzi open

a chink

to let Itie glamour in

on us:

one scoop,

one erotic orb

after the other, changing

                                                our taste then view

of things palatal, then metal?

We dared not trust the slither and skid

                                                in the slider we took, a licking

as bad as Garnett Denny’s,

the black boxer of Belfast,

beaten by ice-cream

to a puffy hulk.

Our will subverted

by our bellies, numbed by the fine whine

of Moto Guzzi,

dumbed more than the vanilla

by the redder

than Lacrima Cristi machine

down from our small Dolomite on Divis Mountain,

            spurting across our crusts

(as we called them,

hard top of the bread,

and rhyming slang for head).

Next thing, we’d hello

and hallow the Madonna,

suck spaghetti Bolognese,

and bugle BRAVO

over Chianti And sure as fate. . .

we did, reel it in

like the ribbons

of the roads ahead,

starting at the Rivoli

down North Street.

Not Heinz-from-a-can

fat-as-worms

spaghetti,

to put a hook in                                              

and fish

for the palates of idiots,

but fast, thin,

racing-trim spaghetti

the team

of Guzzi riders

trained on

and wound down

to the fork of the Old Lodge Road

and Peter’s Hill

(married like the Pope

and Mr. Paisley)

into Carrick Hill

amassing there,

as though in allegiance

to the red light.

to salute

the colour

that would roar and flow

                                                downhill

for fifty years

thereafter

with the screaming

octaves and high

octane

of blood.