[Sorry if this is a little longwinded but it's something I've been meaning to write for some time and didn't want to do it halfheartedly]
For as long as I can remember I've owned this Coronet Victor camera. It used to belong to my grandfather, or should I say I'm fairly sure it used to belong to my grandfather. The fact that it belonged to him is one of those small fragments of information you've carried from childhood, or could it be just I've carried from childhood, but don't want to fact check just-in-case it isn't correct.
I once remembered that my mum had won a bunch of flowers in a competition held by our milkman. I vividly remember going to the dairy at the end of our road where we walked between two rows of battery-powered milk floats lined up in a bizarre, ceremonial, guard of honour. My mum collected her bunch of flowers, which she was very pleased with. I remember she was wearing a lovely 60's style patterned 'A' line dress, although being six I didn't know what an 'A' line dress was. We both walked out as pleased as punch. As an adult I said to her, "Do you remember when we went to the dairy to pick up that bunch of flowers you won from the milkman?". There was a silent pause and I was met with a blank look that I can remember to this very day. My mum then explained to me, as though I was still six and I had just woken from a nightmare, that I must have dreamt the whole thing. She smiled at me indulgently, I can't tell you how disappointed I was. Not for the loss of the flowers, they would have been long gone, but for the loss of the memory.
So you can see my nervousness on the issue of grandfather's camera, in this area I have form, previous you might say, my cherished memories are not to be trusted. Granted, unlike the flowers, the camera does actually exist. It is sitting in pride of place on the bookshelf, in our sitting room, the only of my many cameras to have such a privilege. So to find out that this memory is in fact, like the milkman episode, not quite as I remembered and that my parents had, say, picked it up at a jumble sale, some time in the 70's, would be more than a little disappointing.
During the war my grandfather served as a fireman in London and was a keen photographer, going out photographing fires when he wasn't working. When my grandfather died, from leukaemia, my grandmother being a no-nonsense Londoner, and not giving too much creed to sentiment, threw away the majority of his negatives, many of them glass plates. A fact that, whenever I think about it, fills me with enormous sadness. I know that she wouldn't have done it with any sort of malice, she just wouldn't have seen the point of keeping them. My Coronet Victor is the only thing of 'his' I own and so is very precious to me.
Until recently I'd never shot with my Coronet Victor. When I was young it was just an interesting old camera, but it never occurred to me I'd ever use it for taking pictures. As I got older digital cameras came along and it was relegated as 'just an old film camera'. The sometime in 2008 I bought myself a Holga and got back into film photography, my Coronet Victor was then reconsidered and became the camera that had last been used by my grandfather some fifty plus years before. It takes 127 film which is now only made by Efke in Croatia, I'd bought a roll but somehow I quite liked the idea that my grandfather had been the last person to push that button with any purpose.
On Friday 23 December 2011, the time seemed right, I headed out and over 50 years since it was last used my Coronet Victor began making images again. The shutter's a bit sticky, something I'm not quite sure what to do about, but eight of the twelve shots came out OK. I don't see me using it a lot, but I'm certainly not going to leave it another 50 years.
(Unfortunately, from the shape, not taken with a Coronet Victor)Thanks for reading,
Nigel
