The blue, the yellow and the red
In Iceland, the black beaches can make danger seem imminent. But they can also charm; the difference depends entirely on the prevailing light. Under black skies they frighten; the big black boulders have a sullen expression about them. In sunshine the scene is a sparkling delight and even the boulders smile.
Over a ten-day location job for the Kodak Calendar I was directing the photography for a set of twelve pictures on and around the coastline. We had two Icelandic models; a cheeky red-sweatered boy of nine and a superbly-bearded fisherman with his small blue boat.
The first day was bright and all went well. The second day too dawned with the sun in charge. At breakfast in the little beach-side hotel everyone was in high spirits - the models, photographer and driver-interpreter. Even I grinned sometimes.
And then the sky darkened. As well as that, I had one small personal cloud. The boy’s mother had just been rushed away to Reykjavik after a phone call to say a close relative was seriously ill. She took me aside and said she was happy to leave her son with us, but, as I had a nine-year-old son myself, I was to take charge of him. She talked to him, and he nodded vigourously, obviously delighted to be allowed to stay. From then on, I watched him as a wary cat watches an excited puppy.
After breakfast the photographer, Jack Oakley, stood at the window growling at the low, black clouds. Within minutes the rain was bucketing down. Photography was out for at least an hour. We wandered into the lounge and sat, staring out through the big windows. Jack began telling us tales of location jobs and the fisherman made the boy’s eyes open wide at his story of being in a storm at sea in his small boat. Then the room began to lighten and the rain stopped. A squirt of sunshine came, and went. The boy pleaded to be allowed to go down to the rock pools to try catching something.
I hesitated, then gave in. Through the interpreter I told him to choose a spot and then give us a wave and stay in sight of our window so that I could see him. I made sure he wore his yellow waterproof and rubber boots and we watched him galloping down past our blue boat to the sea, carrying aloft his rod and line. He waved at me and sat on a little outcrop. He stayed where he was and I ceased to worry.
We continued chatting. But the next time I looked he had disappeared. I shot out of my seat and ran down the beach, calling him. There was no sign of him. I waded in to get a view further along the beach, left and right. Then with the water waist high I saw something yellow floating away from the shore. I lunged forward.
Guilt choked me. I should have watched him, I should have watched him. It was the boy, face down, his arms spread. I yanked him upwards, but he came up much too easily: it was his empty waterproof. Crazy with fear and guilt I went ploughing back to the beach, shouting, searching for any sign of him. They were all out there now, everyone running in different directions. A long way up the beach there was a bigger group of rocks. I raced towards them, clambered over them. A bright red sweater appeared immediately below me.
He sat, dangling a line in a rock pool. He swivelled round, looked up at me and made a grimace. ‘No fish,’ he said.
Little-known Facts
What I found after leaving school at 14 was that by trying out many different occupations you learn a lot of little-known facts.
But I found that nobody wants to know these things, so you can’t show off. The girlfriend certainly isn’t interested. Mind you, some people, particularly the clever ones, do come up with interesting little-known facts.
Take this 21st century example given to me by a senior member of the family: the computing power used by an Apollo moon mission is now held in that tiny chip in your credit card. Now that could raise a girl’s eyebrows in admiration and might even get you invited back for a cup of tea.
In the very early days I had a show-stopper: we had a friend who had a car. Now, that was hot stuff.
In my first job as an apprentice mechanical engineer I learned what a ‘reamer’ is. Rotate a reamer inside a drilled hole in a thick chunk of metal and it will make that hole just a hairsbreadth bigger than it was before. I learned that by having to do it. I also learned, again by doing it, that the man who wields the sledgehammer for the blacksmith is the ‘striker’ and that the huge cake of molten stuff you find in the early morning under the cold ashes of the blacksmith’s furnace is called ‘clinker’, which has to be raked out before the fire is re-lit. Also that high-speed emery wheels are used for sharpening tools and if you let your thumb get too close to the wheel, which is spinning towards you, it tends to get itself dragged down between the fiendish wheel and the bit you’ve been resting the tool on and you have the top of your thumb ground off. I know that, too, by having done it.
In my second job a few months later as a Ryman’s sales assistant I learned that a ream is 480 sheets of paper and has nothing whatever to do with making holes bigger. I also learned that a quire is 24 sheets and has nothing whatever to do with anthems. Also that a sheet of paper can draw blood.
Every car/lorry/bus tyre has a very long and unique number stamped into its sidewall. I first learned that at Scammell’s Lorries in my third job a year later. I knew because I had to adopt the wicket-keeper squat in front of every wheel on the production line, rub chalk on the number to make it readable and write it down. This job also tossed in the fascinating but unrelated fact that sewage farms do actually exist. Scammell’s of Watford was the unfortunate south-westerly neighbour of the district sewage farm. Cycling to and from work and experiencing a rare north-easterly was an unforgettable experience, but the subject was well outside the chatting-up territory.
Until I got going in my fourth job as darkroom boy with the Kodak company I had imagined the country’s camera-users were nice, ordinary, clean-living and upright people. I learned that in fact there were many who would have blushed with mortification at the description. Hand-processing some 7 - 800 films a day I saw some astonishing images.
Sixty years later I am still learning. Or, rather, discovering trivia. I have just learned that, in 1548 or so, Archbishop Cranmer engaged one John Merbecke to provide a new musical setting for the contents of the original Book of Common Prayer, eventually published in 1549. If you’re an Anglican you will have sung Merbecke’s new notes.
But the trivia lies in the printing of his music. In 1548 you couldn’t print the staves and the notes in one go, as you can today. The staves and the notes had to be printed in two separate print runs. First, the staves, and then the notes, sitting on or between the lines. This led to problems with getting the notes to sit in their proper places among the lines, because between the two print runs the paper would shift up or down or sideways slightly. Thus, each copy was slightly different, with the notes appearing in different places. So one copy might well be different from another.
When it came to using the music one singer would be confidently singing the E clearly indicated on his copy while his neighbour equally confidently sang the D indicated on his. One can imagine the mutterings and elbow nudges rippling down the surpliced ranks.
A nice one, that. But would it get you invited back for tea?