Sein, Oder Nicht Sein...Redux-ish...

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I did say it would be back to normal ranting today - and God knows there's plenty to rant about at the moment - but I've just made one of those mad synchronistic connections that happen inexplicably from time to time. Pictured above is one of the photos of an eBay lot I intend to bid on, as I always liked the Pentax ME, although I've never owned one: it was a kind of 'sweet spot' camera that wold make a good 'daily carry' - small, light and very easy to use, with great performance to boot.

Scanning the photograph pictured (I've rotated it for clarity) I noticed the purchase receipt sticking out of the bundle of manuals on the right. Bought in the early eighties (? I can't quite make out the year) from a branch of Photomarkets, the company I worked for as a salesman for six months after graduating college in the late seventies. Indeed, the ME was one of my favourite cameras to sell, it was so good; and I sold a good few, too.

But the synchronicity thing here is not the camera or working in Photomarkets, but rather involves the job I took after that: I became a photographic technician at Birmingham University, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, in the direct employ of one Arthur Burgess, the Chief Technician, a man of considerable talent and dry wit, originally from Dublin. I just remembered, forty-odd years later, the punning remark he made at my interview for the job: the grade for the role was to be 2B - as Arthur put it, '...2B or not 2B,  that is the question...'. My job grade at BT (latterly Openreach) was B2: just like bookends...

 

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