The Photo Booth
Diane remembers some of the key moments in her life, all brought sharply into focus by pictures taken at the trusty kiosk in town
There were four of us in the photo booth.we were all long limbs and sun-streaked hair back then.and laughter – lots of laughter. I can’t recall who was sitting on the little swivel seat, but I know one of us must have been under the scrum of it all, with the other three piling on top.
The shop assistant on the Pick ’n’ Mix counter watched as we emptied our plastic purses, desperate to find the right coins to put in the machine.
She tutted as the four of us clambered into the booth, screaming and joking and laughing.
It was Anne, I remember now, who sat on the little hard, plastic swivel seat. She was first into the booth. She was first in everywhere, so that was no surprise.
Anne: the first of us four to have a boyfriend; get engaged; become a wife. The first of us four to have a baby. The first of us to . . .
It was Anne sitting on the seat, screaming that we were squashing her, which only made us squash in even more.
“Pull the curtain, Diane!” Bev yelled to me once we were all inside.
We balanced on the seat, craning our necks so that our faces, our smooth and unlined, untroubled faces, would be in the shot when the flash went.
I pulled the curtain shut, or tried to, but it wouldn’t budge at first. It was an old piece of cloth.
I yanked it harder and it finally flew across the metal pole at the top of the booth, giving us four inside some protection from prying eyes.
We never could time the photos right, though. Every time the flash went off we were still practising our smiles or looking at each other, instead of at the camera.
All too soon it was over, four flashes from the camera, four photographs taken.
We tumbled out of the booth to be met by the steely glare of the assistant from behind the sweets counter where she was serving up four ounces of sherbet with a liquorice stick to a mother and her little son.
We stood by the booth and waited for our photographs to come out of the machine.
We waited and waited. Just when we thought there had been a mistake, some fault in the machine, meaning we were destined never to see our photos, the machine spat them out.
“Don’t touch them!” Sue cried. “they’re still wet and need to dry.”
Only when we were sure did Sue reach her slim hand behind the metal bar to pull out the strip of photos.
We leaned in together, each seeking out her own face first, desperate to know if we looked as pretty as we felt.
The next time was with my boyfriend. His name was Martin Chapman, but everyone called him Marty, even the teachers at school.
I wasn’t the first of us four to get a boyfriend. that was Anne. She’d been going out with Clive, who worked Saturdays at the chip shop, for months.
We didn’t know it then, but she would end up marrying him. a real romance, it was.the pair of them were school sweethearts who stayed together till the end.
Anyway, Marty said he’d call for me one Saturday morning and we’d go into town to the new burger place on the high street.
I told him not to come until “Swap Shop” had finished as I liked watching it and I used to write in.
On the Saturday morning when he arrived, it was Mum who opened the door to him.
“Martin’s here, love,” she said as she showed Marty into the living-room.
Martin! I just wanted to die but Marty shrugged and said he didn’t mind what he was called.
I remember the photo booth that day, sitting so close to Marty, pressed together tight on that tiny little stool. I told him he smelled nice and he said it was his dad’s aftershave. I waited for him to say I smelled nice, too, but he never did.
He spent ages turning the swivel stool this way and that, getting it to just the right level so that our eyes matched up with the line on the camera ahead, like the sign told us to do. when it was set right he delved into his jeans’ pocket for the money for the machine, but his hand came out empty.
“I’ve forgotten my wallet, Diane.”
So I paid for the photographs that day. Marty stared into the camera, moody as Clint Eastwood when the first flash went off.
The second and third photos were just the two of us staring blankly at the camera, like rabbits caught in headlights, shoulders pressed together, our heads towards each other, Marty’s hair as long as mine. Just before the final flash went, Marty turned to me and kissed me.and that’s the one I remember, the kiss and the flash of light all at the same time.
It was like being kissed by an angel, with all the stars in heaven exploding at the same time.
We went out lots more times. I really liked him, but when he started forgetting his wallet more and more often,
I dumped him and cried for three days.
The trip after that was for my Young Person’s Rail Card. It’s the bubble perm I remember in this one. If only I could forget it!
There were two curtains in that photo booth. One curtain you could pull across to give you a bit of privacy from the Pick ’n’ Mix counter, which was still there, although I hadn’t seen that snooty assistant in years.
There was another curtain behind your head which you could either use or not, depending on what colour you wanted behind you.
The photos were no longer black and
white.
You could choose to have the white plastic of the booth or a nasty blue, the colour of the slippers that Auntie Pam bought Mum for Christmas.
I chose the blue and pulled the curtain across.
I thought it might detract from my perm, which I was still getting used to and hated. I wished I’d never had it done. It took weeks to drop into a decent curl from the tight spiral I came out of the hairdresser’s with.
I went everywhere with my railcard, to different cities to see bands at gigs. Me, anne, Sue and Bev went everywhere together on the train.we spent Saturday afternoons mooching round the shops after Friday nights in the pub.
Friday nights were girls’ nights out. Sometimes it was just three of us.
Whenever we could prise Anne and Clive apart it was four. Love’s young dream, they were, always together. Never a sign that things would go as badly as they did. But there never is, is there, when you’re young?
In the photo for my work ID I look like an escaped criminal. In all four of the photos I had taken for my first office job, I look hideous.
I’d been given a leaflet from work before I joined.
Don’t smile in your ID photo.
So I didn’t smile. I looked miserable and fed up, and that was before I even started in my job.
All the warning signs were there, really. I should have known better. I never settled there.
“Don’t smile” seemed to be the company’s mantra and motto.
I only did it for the money, of course; it was never a career, just a job.
I turned up at five to nine, had an hour for lunch between one and two, and left at five past five. On Fridays I had to take my lunch earlier from twelve to one, as Julie, the accountant’s personal assistant, liked to take the later lunch.
I was her skivvy, so I had to do as she said.
There were other jobs over the years, and other work ID cards I had to be photographed for.
But it was that first job I remember, burned into my brain.
Because that’s when we found out Anne was ill.
I sat in the booth and did everything the official words on the passport form had told me to do.
I faced forward and looked straight into the camera.
I kept my mouth closed, eyes open, glasses off, hair back, no hat.
I made sure there were no shadows on my face and no red-eye glare before I popped my pound coins into the machine.
The passport form said I had to use a neutral expression, so I tried not to cry, which was hard.
Anne wanted us all – all four of us – to go away on holiday together.
It’s hard to refuse your best friend at the best of times, but when she’s been told she’s only got months to live, well, you do what you can, don’t you?
Anne wanted a week in the sun, dipping her feet in warm waters beside a villa on the beach, sharing it with her three closest friends.
I took my savings and blew them on the holiday, because life is for living, and when it takes people like Anne from you it is cruel beyond words.
My bus pass photo shows someone I never thought I’d be. My face is lined, heavy and troubled in the four photos that come out of the machine in the train station. It’s my auntie Pam’s face, with shorter hair and more worry lines than she ever had.
I had to use the train station to have these photos taken as the shop with the Pick ’n’ Mix is long gone.the building stands empty, boarded up on the high street.
I get free bus travel now. It’s one of the joys of getting older, they tell me – those who don’t know. Today is the day I’ll take my first free ride with this new pass.
All three of us have been planning it for weeks, messaging each other online with excited words, looking forward to seeing each other again after how many years? Thirty-seven?
Today will be a good day. Lunch is planned, where we will catch up and share tales, and we will raise a glass to the memory of Anne.
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