The Cambo and the Mob

(7.Feb.2020) Today is Friday and it’s grey out there!

About an hour ago I stopped by the large photo store situated directly behind the Royal Theatre in downtown Copenhagen.

Outside I met another elderly photo-nut, the hounorable and always very charming C.S.

But he is currently selling out of his collection, I understand. Nontheless I managed to burden him with yet another oldie, an outwardly very nice Miranda 35mm slr; that however needs a certain amount of work inside, something C.S. is very clever at.

The friendly folks inside the shop on the other hand wanted to burden me with one more (optical bench) camera, even if the Gods know I have enough already. I wainly tried to protest, but at 650 DKK (100 Dollars) I felt they were expecting me to accept the offer.

The camera is a more or less complete CAMBO 13x18cm/5×7″.
Obviously the camera has been unused for many years, and everything need a CLA (cleaning, lubing, adjustment).
The shop manager said he could see in their records they had sold it second hand to someone abt. twenty years ago for 3000 DKK (abt. 450 dollars, and without the bellows!).

Abt. 40 years ago I bought my first Cambo, which was the 4×5″ size, and that I’ve long since parted with. Ofcourse I hope to get the leisure and wherewithall to bring this really quite nice 5×7″ specimen up to specifications.

Most budding large format photographers today probably don’t want the 5×7 size cameras, as films in this size is now practically non-existant, except perhaps for a very few black and white types. But I always particularly liked the 5×7 size.

Tonight I had a – more or less clairvoyant – warning dream. I’ve detailed it in an email to an old acquaintance, that I consequently had to cancel meeting for lunch. The email runs approx. like this (translated from the Danish, and with small amendments):

7.Feb.2020

Hello K.

Now all H*ll is loose!

Last night I had this esp-dream: I was approached by a man with an opened tin of canned food, the razor sharp edges of the pried-open can being visible. He was apparently planning to hurt me with these sharp edges. I mowed to avoid him. End of dream.

Exposition: 1) The can has food in it; it’s just opened, but not empty. 2) Someone wants to hurt me – when the food is served? 3) I should move to evade the attack.

Thus WITH REGRET I have to cancel our appointment for the 12th.

If food poisening is planned, it would almost certainly hit us both; otherwise things would perhaps look just a tad too suspicious. Remember: I’m not totally unknown by a few journalists and/or public persons.

I’m now in my mid seventies and am beginning to fear I’ill never learn to instantly listen to my gut feeling. Because you know, the instant I saw said restaurants home page I got a bad feeling.

If I had just said so and insisted on listening to these feelings about the place instead of trying to rationalize it away, things could have been simpler.

I’ve considered to suggest moving our appointment to one of the restaurants on the 5th floor of the Magasin department store on Kgs.Nytorv.

But the thing is, I’ve in fact survived two very dangerous assassination-teams precisely in the Magasin store; the most resent taking place in one of the cafés on the 5th floor and within the last year.

I think I may perhaps have more or less expected that the mob had cooled down a bit. But apparantly ‘cooling-down’ is not part of their DNA – rather on the contrary?

Very likely the mob would like greatly to make one or more former M.o.J.’s real happy – someone they may perhaps expect to have one or more old grudges to settle?

Hope you do accept my cancellation without hard feelings?

Many kind regards
G.

(7./8.Feb.2020)

May be crossposted on www.gamleboeger.dk and
http://blocnotesimma.wordpress.com

My twitter account is now again activated and hope to post again soon on www.twitter.com/gamleboeger