It is the beard that is a give-away. There was a small window of hairiness, somewhere between late-onset maturity and marriage when hair warmed my chin. Then I was told it was ridiculous and I had to shave it off. So I did. So this photograph must have been taken in about 1972 when I … Continue reading Two From A Film Strip

Black against white. Or at least black against cloudy grey. Nature against man against Nature.

I am taking a walk along the path where history interacts with geography and words rub shoulders with images - the vintage postcard path. The destination doesn't matter and the route is determined by the random selection of old postcards I have bought at an antique fair. Number 10 in the series sees us in … Continue reading The Vintage Postcard Path 10 : To The American Colonies, If Fine

It's all angular; you could cut yourself quite badly on that leading edge. It sprouts from a patch near the centre of Halifax that used to be the home of a brewery: all odds and ends, curves and pipes; as blunt as a barrel. It fits its environment like a lump of breeze block in … Continue reading A Lump Of Breeze Block In The Taj Mahal

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features an air stewardess hugging a cute puppy. Auntie Miriam may have been many things, but she was never an air stewardess, but there again it's a donkey she is hugging and not a puppy. The donkey is undeniably cute however and that look of affection could be … Continue reading Sepia Saturday 270 : One Is A Donkey

In this strange and wonderful world of blogging nothing is impossible. It started with an old postcard, the one featured in my last post entitled "No Stamp, No Box, No Pint" It was an old picture postcard posted 101 years ago and featuring the Bell Hotel in Tewkesbury. At one side of the old pub … Continue reading No Stamp, A Bloody Big Box, And Lots Of Delicious Pints

There was a time - in the 1950s and 60s - when towns like Halifax seemed to be in love with the future. And the future was motor cars: great big metallic, two-toned, chromium-plated beasts that drank petrol with the abandon of an alcoholic. And the garages that sold them were, in the main, bastions … Continue reading Hunger Hill Is Fighting Back

I had a bit of a bad feeling about this one. As I entered the very long, very dark and very deserted old walkway under the railway line there was a young bloke in a hoody walking a very cross looking dog approaching behind me. The shot looking out of the old stone viaduct was … Continue reading How A Bad Feeling Turned Into A Good Feeling in Halifax

One definition of "providence" is "timely preparation for future eventualities". So when they built Providence Place Chapel in Cleckheaton in 1857 they probably thought that if the congregation eventually dwindled they could convert the building into an Indian Restaurant. And so they did.