Magical Lives ..

I was already in a philosophical frame of mind before I'd even heard of the death of David Bowie this morning. The thing is, I was working on the restoration of an old photograph for a lady who came into the studio last week. A simple shot - just two guys standing together in a field in their 1940s demob suits, smoking fags, brylcreemed hair, smiling (So obviously not these two! This shot's from my archive!) - but it was when she began to tell me a little about them that it started to hit home. I mean, I always look at the people in old pictures that I'm working on and try to imagine the lives they led, but the two chaps in this particular photograph turned out to be brothers, both of whom served in the Second World War. One of them was in the Navy, and managed to break his ankle whilst playing football on the deck of his ship. He was put into port for treatment in India, after which his ship sailed off .. and was torpedoed! The other brother was in the RAF and rescued a pilot who'd crash-landed in a plane that was still carrying a bomb. He got the pilot out, and the bomb went off. Both guys were flung 50 feet across the airfield!..

Magical lives! Bowie had one, God less 'im .. but so do we all. Now do you see how important your photographs are?..