Just the Ordinary
By. LESLIE ADRIAN
In recent weeks, however, a number of friends have told me about how poorly they had been looked after by Polyfoto. As it happened, they had all been to the small Polyfoto studios you find in the High Street, had all been rather sum- marily dealt with by receptionists and photo- graphers (often the same not very bright young thing) and had all come away feeling that there must be more enjoyable ways of having your photograph taken.
I don't think there is an enjoyable way to have your photograph taken if you're English. We're nearly all terribly embarrassed in front of a camera and, surely, one of the qualifications of any professional photographer must be the ability to put people at their ease and stop them freezing into unnatural poses. Someone told me that Polyfoto is better in large departmental stores than in the High Street so I went, in your interest and my embarrassment, to one of them.
It nows costs I2s. 6d. for twenty photographs and I suppose this is a reasonable increase in cost. (It's a long time since it was only five bob.) You pay in advance and it's an extra Is. 3d. if you want the photos sent in the post when they are ready—about ten days later. The receptionist/ photographer took me into the small studio— `Keep your head down, please. Mind the lamps' —and sat me down facing the camera. I had decided that I wasn't going to be difficult, nor was I going to do anything to help myself but would only do what I was asked to do.
The girl asked me whether I wanted the photo- graphs for publicity purposes or 'just the ordinary Polyfoto.' I said, just the ordinary—but what would you have done if I'd said publicity?' 0h,' she said, `some people want a particular profile or something like that.' In the next three minutes she click-click-clicked her way through most of a roll of film, each time saying no more than 'Look here,' pointing to the lens or a mark on the wall or on the door, while I sat, compliant but unsmiling. Eventually I interrupted and asked how many more were left (there were three) in the hope that she might forget the mechanics for a moment and 'produce' me a bit, even ask me to smile, if only once. 'Look here, please,' she said and knocked off the last three.
Ten days later I got twenty photographs, every one with exactly the same expression and all as terrible as the one that purports to identify me in my passport.
I think that what this proves is that the rernedY is in one's own hands as well as in those of the photographer. Obviously the photographer would be doing her job better (and would be getting . more and better satisfied customers) if she did more than merely rattle through the twenty set positions that she knows by heart. Failing this, you must forget your embarrassment, take charge of the session in so far as you are allowed to or get time to, and 'produce' yourself. I'd hate to have anyone see the results of my session, but I know that, next time, if I'm determined enough, I can do a rather better job. It's all wrong that I should have to, but, until Polyfoto photographers do their job properly, it'll be the only way.
This year's edition of the AA handbook has just been sent to members and I'm afraid that, like previous editions, it is another wasted oppor- tunity. Over two million copies of the handbook are now printed every year and, each year, the AA comes up with fiddling amendments to the way it lists its recommended hotels. This year it's 'B stands for bed and breakfast, M for the main meal charges and W for the weekly terms. They are shown in different forms of type and it is hoped that members will find them clear and useful.' One or two other similarly slight changes have been made but still the need for improving standards is all but ignored.
It is now nearly two years since the AA,. together with the RAC and the Royal Scottish Automobile Club, began re-assessing the 131- four-star hotels that all three organisations recommend. In that time, I hear, they have looked again at sixty-eight of the 137; sixty of them have been re-awarded their four stars, five have lost one star and three have lost four stars. If proof were needed that the standards of assess- ment used by the motoring organisations mean very little, this is it: by what conceivable stan- dards can three hotels have rated four stars for years and now rate none at all? The pity of it all is that the two million and more members are a captive audience in the good sense that, since they get their handbooks front the AA automatically as part of their subscriP- tion, the AA could, if it chose to, do a great service to the public and to the catering industrY if it only applied worthwhile standards to the hotels it recommends. When will the motoring organisations try to take a hand in improving things instead of merely accepting existing stain' dards in the hotel trade?
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