Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
A Nice Collection
This postcard was sent from Budapest to North Wales 126 years ago, during the height of the early twentieth-century postcard-collecting boom. It dates from the period before the postcard backs were divided to accommodate both the address and the message, so any message had to be squeezed onto the front of the card. No problem – after a century and a quarter, the message becomes more interesting than the view.
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Bank Holiday Monday
What better way to celebrate a Bank Holiday Monday than to stride across the green fields of Yorkshire, leaving the smoke-filled streets behind, and then scale the gorse-clad valley sides in search…
Shared Art
These days, if you buy shares in a company, the best you can expect is a pro-forma PDF digital certificate – with all the elegance of a breeze block. Back in the…
Waiting For The Cable To Drop
This is an old photograph, picked at random from the boxes and drawers of old photographs I live with. There is nothing special about it – I have no idea who Mac…
Temple To Steam
While we’re on the subject of ancient monuments (see yesterday’s post), what about this fine obelisk? Built as a temple to Steam, the god of industry, it was worshipped by…
Them And Us
Down south, if they find a load of standing stones, they declare it an ancient monument and charge people £30 to look at it. Up north, we simply assume they’re…
Waves And Hills
I think this photograph of mine of Elland dates from the early 1980s, but I can’t remember the exact date (oh, how I wish we had metadata back in those…
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