It was a ball at the Peter Pan

We’ve got a new gizmo at our place – something that converts old 35mm slides and negatives to digital format.
Genius! For years I’ve kept looking at dusty boxes of slides lurking in wardrobes and told myself to throw them out. Keeping them was pointless because who has a clunky slide projector any more?
But we never did chuck them.
I’m glad now because I’ve been having such fun finding treasure. Sure, 80% of the shots do need to be dumped – all those many nameless lakes and mountains and party scenes full of people you can barely remember. Out they go.
But there are delicious images as well. I’ve found ancient holiday snaps that bring back so many memories. And shots of my now grown-up daughters that remind me of their baby years.
And pictures of me, too, that reveal an utterly different time. Take this one. I’m the girl in the middle, looking a bit tipsy in my black lace. I’m 18 or 19. I’ve gone mad for scarlet lipstick. The black eye-liner was the sort that went on shiny and could be peeled off in a tissue-thin strip. My hair: roller-set and sprayed stiff with lacquer.
I marvel now that I was once so good at sewing I could whip up this tricky ball gown with ease. It’s backless, as I recall, and has a long, white, bell-shaped skirt of something silky, possibly a fabric called sharkskin.
I may have gone shopping in the ground-floor fabric department at Smith and Caughey’s. It had everything from chunky tweeds to fine satins and there was a long wooden bench where you could perch on stools to graze the pattern books from Vogue, Butterick, Simplicity and McCall’s. I once had boxes full of paper patterns.
We’re at the Peter Pan Cabaret at the top of Queen Street, Auckland. It has a big dance floor. There’s a live band, with blokes in tuxedos playing saxophones.
I have a small glass of something sweet. Gin and lemonade? Can’t remember. Possibly Pimm’s. Light shines on the neck of a tall brown beer bottle in the foreground. Booze packaging is pretty basic in the early 1960s.
That’s my friend Sue. Note her long kid gloves, unbuttoned at the wrists, the fingers tucked away to expose her hands. That’s how girls do it, all the better to hold your cigarette. Almost everyone smokes.
Sue and I are junior reporters at the Auckland Star, the city’s daily afternoon newspaper. Handsome Bill (nice guy, but we’re just friends) works in sales for BOAC – short for British Overseas Airways Corporation.
The Peter Pan, the Star and BOAC are long gone from Auckland’s business scene, though the airline lives on as British Airways.
Do you have old slides? Rescue the fun ones. Digitise them. Print them. And, most importantly, caption them.
As future mementos they’ll only work if people know the context – and get to understand there was a long-ago time when young women wore gloves almost to their armpits, thought that smoking did no harm, and could make just about everything in their wardrobes.

* Lindsey hosts Let’s Talk on Triangle TV in Auckland, airing 7pm Fridays. This year’s season kicks off on Jan 27 and focuses on books, media and arts - all about what's hot on paper and on screen.

Take up your oars

As we settle into the first week of 2012 I’m thinking about rowboats.

Tidying up some old stuff I came across notes I made at a ‘Business and Consciousness’ conference in Mexico. It was a long time ago – 1999, I think, the year in which we were all worried about how Y2K might shred our lives, just as now there’s a heap of fretting about the arrival of the fabled 2012.

Not that we should worry overmuch – I can still remember people being nervous of 1984 because of George Orwell’s bleak novel of that name. It's interesting how we've always stayed afloat despite all the angst.

I heard lots of high-impact speakers in my 1999 week in Acapulco, and one guy (whose name I can’t remember) did a whole session on that folk song we all know so well and probably sang in rounds at school or around campfires: Row, row your boat, gently down the stream…

He made me think of it in a whole new way, pointing out that every line is worth considering in terms of being good advice for living life well.

Here’s the guts of what he said:

Row, row, row your boat – Do what you’re good at. And keep doing it until you reach your desired destinations, whatever they may be.

Gently down the stream – Go with the flow. Do not flail, panic or mess about. Seek out smooth water. Avoid getting sidetracked by exploring minor side streams. Don’t get caught up in overhanging trees or submerged obstacles. Be wary of whirlpools and scary rapids. All can impede your progress.

Merrily, merrily, merrily – keep a sense of humour at all times. Laughter makes everything better and eases all your dealings with other people.

Life is but a dream – don’t take everything so seriously. Much of the stuff we think is important, such as ambition and success, is just an illusion.

It’s hard to argue with any of that. Basic rowboat philosophy works.

I looked into a rowboat often in 2011. Twin grandsons arrived and for a few weeks, while they were still small enough, they slept together in a beautiful cradle boat hand-made by my husband. Sailing ship carpenters used to make little boats like this for times when an infant arrived during long sea voyages. The boat would be slung from ceiling rafters to rock the baby with the movement of the ship.

Our grandbabies are pictured here at two weeks old, frowning and sleepy. Nine months later, they have of course graduated to individual cots. The cradle boat is empty again, waiting for a next small body to be soothed to sleep inside it.

Then, as the year turned over, I was nudged by yet another rowboat reminder. Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes (author of a long-ago much admired book, Women Who Run With the Wolves) is a prolific Facebook updater who has 25,000 followers, including me.

She wrote a lovely New Year’s Eve piece about what she calls ‘the little red rowboat of the heart’ and of how important it is to choose what to row toward, and to do so diligently and daily.

She went on: “I love that the word 'diligently' has the word 'gently' in it. For though sometimes the rowing must be fierce to pierce the riptides or to row up the downside of the escarpment of a huge green wave, even then, often the gentle insistence of the heart 'to keep going' is what allows us to continue in any weathers.”

Dr Estes writes so well. Let’s hope all our rowboats carry us serenely and strongly through whatever 2012 will bring. Propelled, of course, by our own strong arms and a keener than ever sense of direction.