That's life ..

Don't worry, I'm not coming over all maudlin here, but I wanted to talk today about death! It was actually going to be the subject of yesterday's blog, after the sad demise of Rik Mayall but, ironically, it's become even more poignant now that I've left it one more day 'cos .. my Uncle died last night. That's him in the middle, with my Dad on the right. I just marked the 5th anniversary of Dad's death a couple of weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure the chap on the left's dead too. I know the lady at the back is 'cos that's my aunt!.. 

It's funny, looking at 100 year old photographs from the First World War and thinking .. gosh, they were real people, living their lives .. because that's just become the role of this photograph, with the passing of a mere 36 years. Real people, living their lives, having a night out at the infamous Talk of the North in Eccles, and shot by a pimply 18 year old who only wanted to be a photographer! A young lad just two years out of school and now two weeks away from the first ever school reunion he's ever been to. And that's where another poignant moment comes because, after a question was posted up onto Facebook, it's become apparent that, 38 years on from leaving school, quite a few of my old school chums have already 'bitten the dust'! Drugs, cancer, life's bad luck! What a shame.
The shout has gone out for any old prints of those poor unfortunates but, with so many of today's 'social' photographs being taken on a phone, how on earth will people today view their past life?.. 

RIP, boys ... 

©Martin O'Neill 2014 

No pressure ..

There's a lot buzzing round my head at the moment, what with designing Wedding albums, sorting the SEO for the new website and dealing with what's turned out to be quite a lot of fantastic PR work this week, but I thought I'd write about what I guess is 'The grass ain't always greener on the other side!'..

I was shocked at the number of posts that flew up onto Facebook after the death yesterday of poor old Rik Mayall and, this morning, there are photographs of him taken on Sunday when he was out walking his dog. My God, I thought, he couldn't even walk his dog without being snapped! That was a theme echoed in a TV programme last night about David Beckham, who set off for a motor-cycle ride through the Amazon jungle to 'get away from it all'. (Ok, we'll ignore the camera crews, medics, bike technicians and that irritating little 'health and safety minder..) He was talking to a native of the Yanomami tribe who - much to Beckham's delight - didn't recognise him as he only followed football on the radio. Beckham was talking about his life, and the reasons for his trip. He was doing it, he said, to get away from all the pressure. "Pressure?.." said this guy who lives in the jungle, killing his own food, risking death by everything from poisonous frogs to falling trees and jaguars "What's that?!"...

And relax ...