Film, Tuborg, Airports

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Canon F1 & a roll of [very] expired Agfa film...

    Upcoming experiment. I found this roll of Agfa Ortho 25 film in a camera case that I hadn't opened for some considerable time. It expired in 1994, so I guess it was bought originally around 30 or so years ago. The camera is a rescue item from EBay. I used to own an F1 back in the late Seventies & early Eighties - beautiful piece of kit and in my opinion superior to the more ubiquitous Nikon F-series (having owned & used both [Nikon F & the admittedly brilliant F2], both personally and professionally, I think I'm OK in passing comment).
    Anyway, I was just going to write a little about my intention to put this roll of the unknown through the Canon and how I'm going to resurrect an old enlarger and build a darkroom, etc. and that I would post the results if there were any of note.
    But, as I opened a bottle of Tuborg I had a vivid flashback to Copenhagen Airport, waiting for an internal flight on, with my late friend Jean-Charles - JC to all but his family.
    This analogue renaissance is kind of ironic as we were both in the business, back in the Nineties/early Noughties of making and trying to sell digital imaging software, largely coded & crafted by - and under the watchful eye of - JC, for the companies VBase Ltd. and later InfinitImages, Inc., owned by Joe & myself . We had other contributors of course, the most notable of whom was Eric Maffre, who became a good friend of JC in their time together.
    Sadly JC died a couple of years ago and it's moments like the Tuborg one that push me, Proust-like, straight back to the days we spent travelling Europe; bars we drank in and restaurants we ate far too much in; of delayed flights in Amsterdam; drinking lethal Trappist beers in the Belgian bar or being the very last two onto a flight back from Bremen because neither of us heard the call.
    It's times like this - when something as trivial as a small bottle of indifferent Danish beer can move you, that you remember that life is not lived through images alone.

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