Evening at "Ashlyn"
Dad feeding the pigs
Take care.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Notes From "Another Country"
The past - another country where we did things differently. I was sorting through some old photos recently and lingered long on this picture:
I took it when I was nine or ten years old, in the little bungalow we lived in then. The airing hangs on a line across the room with tea towels drying over the fireplace. My mother is looking at the Kays mail order catalogue and seems to be dreaming of things she can't afford to buy. My father and brother are playing draughts and Dad is wearing his farming clothes - I remember showing them this photo years later and none of us could quite believe that he was in the house dressed in his dirty overalls - we did things differently in those days. The clock on the mantlepiece shows twenty-past-seven and nobody's watching TV, because we didn't have one.
I like the unselfconcious way that children take pictures. All children should be given cameras when they're as young as possible and we should keep the pictures they take. You can never get back to that country again.
Take care.
Take care.
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I can understand why you lingered long over this photo John - it has a wonderful warm feeling to it and as you say times were different then - you snapped a moment in time.
ReplyDeleteI can never take a decent picture! Yet you show us once again how talented you are even when you were younger! I remember Mom taking pictures and she ALWAYS got a finger in it! Me? I just take blurry ones and hope for the best! Thank you for the pictures, John. I love seeing Uncle Ted with his pigs!
ReplyDeleteI was fascinated by the first picture, John. I noticed the tea towels over the fireplace immediately, so homey. Your mother in a dress (how many women wear them around the house today?) and everyone busy and quite unaware of all they were missing! What a great photo.
ReplyDeleteThe first photo is a superb piece of domestic history, we had no TV either until I was nine years old and evenings were spent reading, playing board games, listening to the radio and so on. Do you remember Children's Hour on the radio? I loved the Romany programmes and loathed Larry the Lamb!
ReplyDeleteWonderful, I so wish I had some of my family doing 'ordinary' things.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for taking the time to comment. Yes, I wish I had more photographs of the ordinary things too. Somehow there are great holes in the stuff that people choose to snap - when did you last take a photo of a supermarket, a petrol station, your own house, the place where you work....No, me neither! I hadn't thought about the dress, Sue, but your right, another little detail that's changed without me noticing.
ReplyDeleteThe days of no TV are long gone but I sure wish we had them back.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of giving children cameras when they're young. They do see the world in a different way!
Thanks for stopping by my blog. It's always fun to meet new people.
Hey John, I remember wearing my farming clothes in the "Front room" when I was a teenager.{:)
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