April 1 1985.

Since it is "April Fool's Day", I thought it would be interesting to see what I was doing a quarter of a century ago today.












According to my photographic negative archive, this was it. Scotland were being defeated by Canada at the "Silver Broom", better known as the World Curling Championships. I remember that the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow was turned into a temporary ice rink and the whole affair was spectacular. Teams from all over the world arrived in the city and competition was fierce for the coveted title.

It was a very busy time for me as I was operating my photo wire service to sports desks on newspapers in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland where curling is a huge participant sport. Canada beat Sweden in the final and I recall that the Canadian skip Al Hackner, had the nickname "The Iceman". He was the the man to beat but no one did that year.

Curling is a sport that most people have never tried and I liken to snooker in the sense that you tend to only see it on TV and the people playing, make it look easy as they are the best in the world. I have only tried it once and believe me it is extremely difficult but great fun at the same time.







I thought you might like a look at a wire machine. It is astonishing how easy it has become to send photos around the world today. Back in those days you had to carry around a portable darkroom with trays of chemicals, tongs, hairdryers, photo paper and all the paraphernalia needed to produce a 10x8 inch print which was then strapped onto a drum and each B&W transmission took 7.5 minutes per photo. It was not a cheap piece of kit either costing over £3,500 back then. As you can see, by today's standards, it looks and is a museum piece but thousands of news photos were sent worldwide to newspapers from this very machine.

Now you send high quality colour images from your phone and computer in seconds but sorry folks, all the fun has gone.