In the Frame

" In the frame" -- a photographic/ cinematic term ? Or  meaning being a suspect ? Or being popular ?  I'm not sure which ..   Anyway I am going to use the former idea today.

When my husband died suddenly I took to framing lots of pictures of him. Photos of him as a youth, in the army, footballing, on a motorbike, fishing , dancing etc. I placed these in strategic places around the house and would refer to them for advice, for a chat...to look at things. Daft really. I thought that I could talk with him ---or to him, that he would see things that I could see. Each night as I put out the bedroom light I'd say goodnight to the three pictures of him hanging on the opposite wall. When in the lounge I'd ask ' him ' if he was enjoying a particular TV programme. On the shelf above the computer desk he sat looking down over me...like a protector. He really was " in the frame". Many of the photos had been taken years before we had even met, but I carefully restored them and framed them. Trying somehow to capture the essence of him. It didn't really work. After about 18 months of mourning , grieving and heartbreak I had to remove the pictures for my own wellbeing. I put those and the photo albums in the attic, just retaining one photo on the shelf in the spare room . framed along with a photo of his cats. He is gone but will never be forgotten for I carry his image in my mind and in my heart. Securely framed.

Goodnight

Goodnight my dear heart
I wish you were here
To hold me and love me
And keep me so near.

Goodnight my loved one
Wherever you are,
And hurry home to me
Back from afar.

Goodnight my darling
'Til we never more part
And we can be together
Heartbeat to heart.

Goodnight my precious
For one day I'll say,
"Good morning my darling,
It's now break of day. "

Kath Curtiss

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More precious than gold

This week we are looking at treasure, which, of course, means different things to different people. I have reached the conclusion that my memories are my greatest treasures, for they contain all the people and occasions that I hold dear in life.

 I’ve always been rubbish at photos. At every photo-worthy occasion I can be relied upon to forget my camera. Even when I’ve remembered to take it with me, I can easily leave it in the car, on the coach or just forget that it’s in my bag. With such a cavalier attitude to preserving noteworthy occasions for posterity, it is no surprise that my photo collection down the years is not a neat pile of albums, all thoughtfully populated with photos carefully annotated and in date order, so that some sense can be made of the decades they commemorate. No, it is an ungainly jumble of assorted packets and loose pictures, all rammed in a cupboard somewhere at my previous home and spilling out whenever the door is opened. This chaos is no doubt symptomatic of a disordered mind!

To me photographs are not the vital treasures that they are to many people. For some it feels almost like the occasion didn’t happen if there is no photographic evidence to prove that it did. I think there’s sometimes a tendency to use all one’s energy in getting the perfect shot and, in so doing, enjoyment of the moment itself can be lost. My treasures rely on memories of happy times, rather than the photographs produced for them. In recent times, I can think of a couple of brilliant occasions, for which the memories mean more to me than the commemorative photos.

My graduation day last year was one of the happiest of my life. I have a professional set of photos of me and my family, posed and somehow static and lifeless, which is rammed in a cupboard etc. It in no way reflects my memories of that day, which are of me and my family, sitting for hours in the glorious sunshine outside the No. 5 café after the ceremony, chatting and downing unseemly numbers of bottles of Prosecco. All around us were my college friends with their families doing the same, all united in pride at our achievement and relief that it was all over, getting gently sozzled in the warmth of a July afternoon.

Another occasion was Blackpool FC’s highly memorable promotion to the premier league. I have the programme to remind me, copies of all the press clippings of the event, the commemorative issues of newspapers, the match ticket stubs. None of them are necessary to enable me to conjure up at will the memories of a glorious sunny day, when the world turned tangerine; every service station on the long journey to Wembley thronged by singing, happy Blackpool supporters and neutrals wishing us well; milling around the ground in apprehensive anticipation and bumping into every Blackpool fan you’ve ever known; the breathtaking first sight of our end inside the ground, a sea of tangerine semi-hysteria; the noise and the heat of the remorseless sun; the match, the growing incredulity that we were going to win; the final whistle, the disbelief; the surprisingly muted atmosphere as we all trouped out of the stadium; the daunting realisation that we would actually have to play in the premier league!

Memories – more precious than gold, rammed in the cupboard of my mind. Hope they never spill out.

To finish, here are a couple of quotations about treasures that I enjoyed reading.

“Nothing in the tangible word that isn't living has any value beyond a dollar amount. Considering that dollars can only buy more tangible and inanimate objects, it would seem a far more worthwhile goal to instead learn to place value on the treasures of the mind. Memories, knowledge and skill together are the only things we will ever actually own.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
― Oscar Wilde

Thank you for reading,

Sheilagh

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