Light Of Other Days

From the family archives, here’s a photograph of the aquatic dodgems in Hotham Park, Bognor Regis. That’s my uncle nearest the camera, with an unidentified friend at the helm. They’re about to be rammed, in slow motion, by the boat coming in on the left. Note the lack of safety straps, life jackets or any other kind of protection apart from the rubber bumper wrapped round the coffin-like hulls of the doughty little motorboats. We were a tougher lot, back then.

The photograph was obviously taken from another boat, with a tilt that gives it a lovely sense of dynamic motion. Looking at it, I have a sense memory of a rainbow sheen on soupy green water, the tang of the blue haze of burnt petrol that hung over the little lake, and the frustrating lag between turning the steering wheel and winning any change in direction - a fine practical lesson in Newton's laws of motion.