Chanel 208

Times have changed. The girl in question was shortsighted but too vain to wear her orange glasses all day. She cycled home from school without glasses. It was clearly visible that her eyesight was bad. She was a risk for others and herself in traffic. Contact lenses became available in 1968 and I feared that all beautiful girls in glasses would switch to contacts. But the first contact lenses were expensive and not comfortable at all. Soft contact lenses only became available ten or fifteen years later. To my relief, many beautiful girls kept preferring their glasses. Nowadays, the old stigma about glasses has largely disappeared.

Chanel, thank you so much for playing the part as "Girl on a bicycle" on an Amsterdam bridge way back in 1968. It was a great pleasure to take pictures from "My side of your window".

Light conditions at the pizzeria terrace were quite bad so we headed to a new location. More drinks, more glasses, more snaps....

Chanel 207

And chat we did, about twice a week. Gradually we spent some time talking in front of the house where she lived. She also invited me to join her for a walk with her baby niece on a couple of occasions. Being a singer-songwriter like Ralph McTell, I wrote several love songs for the girl and one of these remained on my set list until the early 1990's. No relationship came out of it but she was my muse for several months. School days....

Chanel 206

To my relief, the girl in question was not surprised, let alone annoyed.

"Ah, you are the boy who cycled behind me a couple of times.... Well, it's a long way home from school so it's nice to have someone to chat with".

Chanel 205

The moment of introducing myself took place half a century ago but I remember it as if it happened last week. Unfortunately an airplane muted my voice so I had to repeat my introduction.

Chanel 204

Observing cycling girls in glasses was a pleasant pastime. But one day a girl came cycling past and I recognized her straightaway. I had seen her from a distance on two occasions and she fascinated me. High time to introduce myself to her. But it took me half a minute to cross the bridge because of the busy traffic. All there was to it was post on the right side of the bridge, hoping to see her again. It might be her daily routine, cycling home after school. And indeed it was. On the third occasion I managed to catch up with her and introduce myself.

Chanel 203

My previous photo shoot took place in the part of Amsterdam where I lived during the 1950's and 1960's. One of the eight locations was a bridge where I often observed girls cycling past. School days.... Several glasses related episodes from the book I wrote last winter were visualized by a Chicago based actress / model called Whitney. Before doing her first photo shoot, Chanel had read some of these episodes in the book manuscript. It's great that the second photo shoot offered her the opportunity to play one of the cycling girls in my story about the bridge.

Chanel 202

Navigating her bike wearing the vintage sunglasses presented no problem to Chanel. The giant lenses gave her perfect eyesight.