Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

My mother had told us that our father wanted to take a photo of us before we visited her friends the Chapmans, who didn’t live far away with their two daughters. Our mother always wanted us to look our best when we visited friends of the family especially when we had photoshoots.

“Come on! What’s taking so long, Ian?” Sandy yelled at me from the back garden. 

“Yeah, in a minute!!” I hollered back. I was still in my room looking at myself in the mirror. I was making sure my white shirt was buttoned up, and that my hair was combed properly. I was even vain at such a young age. 

I wanted my outfit to look good in our photos – the same outfit that my brothers waiting for me downstairs wore, more or less. Most British boys in the post-war period dressed and looked the same, that is, with short trousers, often grey-coloured, and thick woollen socks held up by home-made garters, and neat ‘not-too-long’ hair.  

As I went downstairs – I could hear my mum’s voice from the side of our house where our photoshoot was going to take place. She was asking my brothers not to run and play around too much and mess up their hair and clothes, and thus spoil the photo. I reached the side of the house and true enough, my brothers had already lined up to have their photo taken. 

So we took our places in the line, the four of us, and tried to look as if we were taking it seriously. My father had to retake the photo because Alistair was looking elsewhere and not into the camera. Although Kodak cameras at that time were well engineered, they weren’t so-called ‘Instamatics’, which were introduced in the 1960s.

Like driving a car in the 1950s, operating a camera required a lot of skill, and was usually left up to the ‘men’. At least, it was very rare to see a woman driver in the 1950s. In other words, my dad was a bit annoyed about the photo being ‘messed up’.

Alistair’s friend, Ronny Curwin, had suddenly turned up waving at Alistair, so Alistair had waved back. We stood still this time, after being admonished by our mother, and my father took another picture, finally one he seemed to be satisfied with. My father also took a picture of my three brothers together with Alistair’s friend, Ronny Curwin, who lived next door.  

Soon the ‘photoshoot’ was over and our mother had informed us that we were going for a little drive to Eskdale first before visiting the Chapmans. It might be difficult though not to mess up our outfits when we were playing in the woods and streams of Eskdale!

As I mentioned earlier, our memories are a combination of facts and reconstructions. The passage you read earlier was what I imagined these photos captured about our life back then.

You already know that my mother was the one who collected the photos in the Family Album. However, it was my father who mainly took the pictures, which perhaps explains why there are few photos of him from this period. As you can see from the various photos in these ‘Recollections’, he was quite a skillful photographer. Here you can see his 1940s Kodak camera that he used to take plenty of our photos.

On that Sunday, we might have driven to the nearby ‘countryside’ in Eskdale first, and then drive to the Chapmans to eat Sunday dinner. We often did this alternately, so that they would also visit us every other time.