One of my photographs from half a century ago taken, I think, from the appropriately named Gas Works Lane, in Elland. Many of the buildings, along with the gasometer, have now gone and the aroma of the maltings is just a distant memory.
Three girls on a pebbly beach. Whoever took this photograph captured a classic image without knowing about it.It became a small print, destined to fade into sepia age, pasted in an album, gradually forgotten and then left to make up the numbers in a job lot of old photos.
Probably the 1940s, just possibly the early fifties. Definitely a world still dominated by the war. Clothes that could illustrate a textbook: of fashion or history or both.
I’ve always quite fancied being a poet, but I am a little bit on the shy side. I’ve discovered the perfect solution: QR Code Poetry. You write your poem and turn it into a QR readable image. I can now bare my soul whilst hiding behind the bath towel of technology. Perfect.
As the summer rolls on and the lockdown rules out picnics on the beach, sangria parties in smokey Balearic nightspots, and wild swimming adventures in the Barents Sea, I am restricted to my quest to scan my garden. Whilst cutting the lawn today, I plucked this seeded stem out of the ground and subjected the poor thing to a high resolution scan. The results gave me enough images to fill a holiday album.
Elland Power Station used to sit on the floor of the Calder Valley like a mucky residue, creating black shapes against a grey sky. It’s been replaced now by a bright business park; all very clean and the slightest bit boring.
I am fairly certain that I was stood on the corner of Lister Lane and Rhodes Street in Halifax when I took this photograph some 55 years ago. If you squint in the right direction you can just about match up the curved corner stones with the current view on Google StreetView. My question, however, relates to the two religious establishments that can clearly be seen on my photo, but which have been replaced by houses and car parks on the current view. I have delved into the usual local history annals for clarification, and ended up with such a collection of saints and chapels, I have descended into a state of spiritual confusion. Someone out there, I am sure, will be able to provide me with some form of religious insight.
A dead flower head. The stem and leaf thinks it’s in the peak of health, but the flower has crumpled into a shadow of its former self; like a deflated brown paper balloon. On some of these mornings, I know how it feels.
It can’t have been much more than four months ago when I took this photograph. We were on a boat about to leave Antigua. They were on another boat, also leaving Antigua. We waved to each other saying goodbye. Little did we know what we were saying goodbye to.
Here’s a little challenge for you nostalgia lovers. I must have taken this photograph of Bull Green, Halifax in the 1960s, so you can have fun trying to spot all the shops you can remember. To make it that little more challenging, however, I took the photograph of a reflection of the scene in a car showroom window; so you are seeing everything in reverse. You may recognise DOOWNEERG, the well-known bookshop, or you may be drawn to SNIWEL (but only if you were a man, as women were still banned from there in the 1960s!). Try to work out what was where in this back-to-front world: think of it as a way of exercising your mind, a kind of nostalgic sudoku. If you can’t remember any of the shops, you can always occupy yourself by trying to work out why the cars are going the wrong way around the roundabout!
