When I was young, back in the early 1950s, our family's annual seaside holiday would alternate between Bridlington on the east coast and New Brighton on the west. On those years we headed west, our journey would involve a train to Liverpool and then a ferry across the Mersey to our seaside destination. Sorting through … Continue reading Daffodil On The Water

For anyone devoted to wandering down the side streets of inconsequence, old picture postcards are an ideal mode of transport. You can spend many a happy hour trying to work out where the old photographs were taken from - where, for example, in Elland was this view taken from 110 years ago - and you … Continue reading Special Delivery

The Hebble Brook stealths its way through Halifax, hidden where possible, breaking to the surface only occasionally to spit-wash the shadows of industry gone by.

I've never been convinced by the accusation that when you take someone's photograph, you are stealing their soul; just because you possess a photo of someone doesn't mean you can lay claim to their soul. Possessing the negative is a different thing entirely. Thanks to a recent purchase of an original 1940s negative on eBay, … Continue reading Soul Ownership

A photograph from 1990 of the rather grand ornamental cast-iron clock tower at Greenock Customs House Quay at the mouth of the River Clyde. It's seen better days, but it's listed and about to be restored. And that's half the year gone: time seems to go so fast, and I've seen better days. I'm not … Continue reading Listed Time

With a look pitched somewhere between haughty and flirtatious, this young woman posed before the camera of the Bingley photographer George Tillett more than a century ago. The resulting photograph will have been passed down family generations, subject to the sad laws of decreasing recognition, until it was sold off in a job lot of … Continue reading The Sad Laws Of Decreasing Recognition

Yesterday I went in search of the day before. In some ways it was unchanged: the cobbles, the chimneys, the stone-thick mill walls. In other ways there have been changes: fine craft replacing hard graft, variety replacing dull monotony. The Shears Inn remains - historic and magnificent, and the beer is so much better than … Continue reading Memory Lane

For the last twenty years I have been a member of a disreputable organisation that used to be known as the Old Gits, which holds monthly meetings in a variety of pubs, taverns and inns throughout West Yorkshire. Some years ago we decided, in the sprit of Mao-Tse-Tung's Theory of Continuous Revolution, to re-invent ourselves … Continue reading Shear Luck