There's a good chance that my father's uncle's wife's brother is featured on this old photograph of a grocers shop in Manchester. There again, he might not be. It's a nice photograph anyway. Anyone for a cup of tea?
Category: Calendar
Happy Times
This photograph of Sheffield was taken some 40 years ago when we lived there. It was a bright, bustling place, full of people and lights and a good deal of happiness. If this photo is anything to go by, it also had its fare share of buses. Happy times.
Seaside Memories
A memory from forty years ago. It was the summer, it was the seaside, I was taking photographs because that was what I liked doing then, that is what I like doing now. I think it was Eastbourne but it might have been somewhere else. It doesn't matter: it's a series of shapes, it's a … Continue reading Seaside Memories
Grain
This digital malarkey is all very well and good, but I miss grain. I know you can press a Photoshop button and get false grain, but it's a pale shadow of real grain - the creative offspring of a film too fast and an exposure too reckless. Grainy negatives transformed hapless snappers into the George … Continue reading Grain
Stone History
Few history books compare with a Yorkshire stone wall. There is everything there, from the sandstone of ancient rivers and streams to the carved geometry of hillside stone quarries. There's sculptured trimmings of fine country houses and there's ingrained soot of mills and factories. All children should spend at least one day of their school … Continue reading Stone History
Keep Still
This photograph comes from the collection put together by my fathers' cousin, Ivy Burnett. She was born in 1906 so she may have been part of this gathering which looks as though it dates from the early 1920s. The faces are fascinating: the studied expressions were a necessity of slow shutter speeds. In every crowd, … Continue reading Keep Still
Some Classroom
Almost forty years ago I was doing some teaching for what was then Sheffield Polytechnic. The course was based at Wentworth Woodhouse, one of the largest and most spectacular country houses in Europe. At the time, only six or seven rooms were being used for teaching; the other two hundred and ninety-odd were unoccupied. I'll … Continue reading Some Classroom
Telephone Line
Blue days, black nights, doo-wah, doo-lang;I look into the sky (the love you need ain't gonna see you through);And I wonder why (the little things you planned ain't coming true) ....
Gladys At The Seaside
This photograph of my mother at the seaside was taken eleven years before I was born. A scribbled caption on the reverse of the small print says "Shanklin, Isle of Wight, 1937". Looking at the photograph now, 86 years after it was taken, it is almost like reaching back through time and watching the prequel … Continue reading Gladys At The Seaside
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