David Hayes

Me and My

This series is simply a portrait of a person with an item, that is special to them. -Daryl Gordon   

Portrait Photography
David Hayes

My, is an old tatty rugby shirt!

It’s one of the oldest pieces of clothing I have and although it’s a bit worse for wear it holds within its fabric the memories of a time in my life where everything changed.

When I look at the shirt I get taken back to a time when I was young full of confidence, super fit and a dreamer.

I was a printer, every Thursday one newspaper would have listed jobs within the printing trade. This is where I came across a printing job for a company in Bermuda.

So I threw my hat in the ring.

I remember being at work 2 weeks later and getting a call from my mum, she had called to tell me there was a letter from Bermuda.

I asked mum to open it and read it? Then I heard the words “We’d  like to offer you the position of engraved copperplate printer”

Four weeks later I was stepping off a plane onto a tropical island.

I spent 18 months there.

In that small amount of time I was exposed to not only a different country, but a level of wealth that didn’t seemed possible.

The island was so visually beautiful, I remember cycling to work one morning, I can still picture it in my mind now, a winding path that followed the bay. The water was a ridiculous blue and there was always be a multitude of sea creatures breaching or jumping clear of the bays mirrored surface.

I was so taken by finding myself in what felt like a David Attenborough documentary I started to sing; I kid you not the Disney classic Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Zip-A-Dee-Ay. It really was wonderful day.

I learnt so much when I was there and it set me on a path where I found myself never wanting to settle, I’d caught a bad case of wanderlust.

My old tatty rugby shirt reminds me not only of once what was but of what I can be.

-Dave Hayes

 

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