Laura & Sister Siren @ Brighton Marina, 2010
To look at some of my childhood photos, it's easy to assume I'm a good deal older than I am, but the combination of Kodak fade and the family photos being kept in a split mouldy suitcase in a damp shed have taken their toll.
In addition my father always drove old cars hence the pose at the wheel of the 1960s Renault. Unfortunately the photo with famous swimmer Duncan Goodhew posing for a photograph after I'd just won a swimming gala at around age 12 is missing.
The younger child in some of the photos is my sister who seemed to look about age 2 for years as I recall! There are also a lot of photos of us wearing matching knitted and crochet outfits including bobble hats with pom pom ties under the chin which seem to have gone missing, ahem. My grandmother insisted on churning out endless matching knitwear for us for the first 10 years of our lives despite the fact that there were 2 years between us. Then again my mother once bought us matching Noddy Holder style check flares.
The newspaper picture is quite amusing as I have a face like thunder and messy hair yet the photographer, evidently desperate for something to photograph at the boring yearly local flower show, decided to lie I was as pretty as the flowers so he could slip out before the judging. At 16 I did my work experience with the same local newspaper - The Ballymena Guardian, following red-nosed sports 'n' courts reporter Don for a fortnight as he went about reporting on my former schoolmates who were getting jailed for stealing sections of fence and some mysterious activity known as sport.
10 comments:
Ah granny produced knitwear. I had loads of that and loved my granny so much that even in my early teens I used to get excited when she'd show me a curled up sheet of knitting and explain that it was going to be my next cardigan... I honestly wished I'd kept some of them now.
Really sorry to see that tree eating you...glad you survived the ordeal...!
All great and fun pics....
Shee-ite.
I'm the granny who knits.
I love that sweater and the cables.
XO
WWW
Keep posting those old pics, they are marvellous.
Splendid pics! But I like best the 2010 sirens.
What... exactly... are you doing in that tree?
Love the pics, Laura. You're lucky that so many of your old family pictures survived. I've managed to rescue a few, and I really envy those (like the husband) whose parents made a conscious effort to save and catalogue photographs. My father loved to take the pictures, but my mother couldn't be bothered putting them in albums, so I must scavenge where I can.
I love photos from times past (see, thats better than saying OLD PHOTOS isn't it); that one with the mermaid is cool!
Steve, now that's what I call love!
Thanks Notabene.
WWW - I don't doubt your knitting is much more stylish and Newfoundlandy than what we had.
Thank you Duchess for you gracious comment. Actually that's my favourite too. I think I work best with props in photos!
Rol, it was a hollow tree, I was a child magnet to anything remotely resembling a Mrs Tiggywinkle pad.
Tessa. Funnily enough my father was a keen photographer when we were under 5 and then seemed to lose interest as school photos are just about it after that. Look forward to seeing what you can find which has escaped your mother's neglect anyway.
Thanks Sagittarian. Classic photos? I've always loved the sea and anything sea-related. Except fish. I'm terrified of those.
Looking at this and some of your other posts, can I recommend Sepia Saturday blog to you? They love 'then and now' pics / old gran pics etc and are very friendly!
Lovely images! I also like the Ballymena Guardian schoolmates story. In my early days as cub reporter at the Hull Daily Mail, I was often sent to cover Hull Magistrates' Court and once encountered the former President of the varsity Catholic Society, of which I had been a member, up for cottaging! He looked very embarrassed to see me, but I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. I've always like thatched buildings!
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