Fruitful meeting of driven talents

The best thing about retirement is that it enables you to do lots of other things that you’ve wanted to do for ages, but never had the time for while work was still getting in the way.

I have a son called David. The fact that his name is the same as mine is entirely coincidental. He was born, and given the name, nearly ten years before we met and he introduced me to Danielle, his mother, who later made the inexplicable decision to become my wife. That means David was a founder member of our household, and we just coped with the confusion caused by our sharing a forename. 

He’s a smart cookie. He made some clever investments and managed them well. That has meant that he could say goodbye to all those boring interruptions to the life of his aspirations – or, as most of us refer to it, work – far sooner than most of us. 

Clever lad.

That’s ‘lad’, for a fellow retiree, only from the point of view of the 68-year-old writing this piece.

One of the things David most wanted during the many years he found himself forced to devote time to an external taskmaster, was to do much more photography and get a lot better at it. I should say ‘even better’, since his photos have always struck me as remarkable, especially compared with my own efforts, obtained by pointing my phone at a subject and hoping for the best.

So, on retirement, David signed up for a couple of photography courses. No harm in mastering the technique, he felt. Rightly, in my opinion. I’ve always believed that a little learning is a bloody useful thing, as one blags one’s way through life. I know, however, that there’s an opposite school of thought suggesting that knowing what you’re doing can be useful if you’re going to try your luck doing it.

It would be good if someone explained that to Boris Johnson.

David’s latest course has been focusing on portraiture. It was while he was down at a boatyard that he made the acquaintance that would guide him through this part of his studies. That was Roddy. 

Now Roddy’s another man who’s following a calling. He decided, a decade ago, that what he really wanted to do was build a boat. But not from a kit, or even from components. He found a design he wanted to follow, and after that, apart from a few sheets of plywood, he relied on his own dexterity to work with simple, raw wood. He cut it and bent it and moulded it into the shapes he wanted, to turn the design on paper into the physical boat he yearned to launch.

As the years rolled by, the dream took shape. Now it’s reached the point of being recognisably a boat, with a deck and cabins and everything. So far advanced, indeed, as to possess both an inside and an outside.

Roddy at the boatyard

“Hey, this is great,” said David. “I wonder… would it be too cheeky? I’m doing a photo portrait project. Could I take pictures of you around your boat? You can have as many as you want for yourself as well.”

“Wow,” Roddy replied, “no one’s ever asked me anything like that before. But, hey, why not?”

So David took 800 photos, of which he’s selected a handful or so for his project. And I’ve chosen three to include here.

I like the rather arty silhouette of Roddy passing a window, brightly lit by the sun outside. Amusingly, it turns out that it was the result of a technical slip by David: he tried to adjust the exposure to show Roddy more fully, but in fact adjusted it the other way, making the silhouette even more silhouette-y. Sometimes chance does things well.

Then there was Roddy striding along the deck of his fine new boat. As David says, you can practically imagine it butting its way through the waves. Out, perhaps, to the fishing grounds.

Nearly ready to launch

But I said Roddy’s boat had an inside and an outside, and David wasn’t going to pass up the chance to get photos of both. In one, Roddy strikes a glorious if unplanned pose that, as David rightly remarks, is reminiscent of the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio harbour in Brazil.

Roddy reviewing his creation and finding it good

Appropriate, given that Christ’s background included carpentry, essential for the kind of boatbuilding Roddy went in for.

This all goes to show what pursuing your interest can do. David has made a new friend. That friend introduced him to the extraordinary task to which he’s devoted a decade. There’s something infectious about enthusiasm that strong, for a project that’s pretty unusual, but which has produced such a fine result.

Above all, what I like most about these photos, is that they represent a glorious encounter. Two people getting the chance to realise a longstanding aspiration. And finding that each can enhance the other.

A winning combination all round, I reckon.