Sepia Saturday

Determined to post something sepia today, my blogging has really been suffering lately from work /family and other demands..... for the past week I've been on jury service which has been interesting a more than a little surreal - an insight into another world.



And heres another world - the world of my great Uncle Stan, with his brother Roy (who died in the 2nd world war) and various dashing daring friends of the 1920's.

This picture above is Roy, Hedda (I think?) and Stan on the right.


Hedda again, possibly on the left? and Stan is in the middle, Roy on the end with the bottle in his pocket.


and two young ladies, very shockingly attired.....

summer sepia 7

This Saturday's sepia photographs are all pictures of previous Lettuce holidays, which seems appropriate as I'm off on holiday soon.


This photo is one of my favourites, I think because its such a lovely picture of my mother, and her mum - my nan. And it looks properly windswept as English beaches tend to be.
I'm looking quizzical there in the background, and my brother and sister in the front.




This second photo brings back memories of the sand creations my father used to make for us to sit in - cars and boats especially. And I remember that spotty tunic I'm wearing, it was towelling and would have been scratchy with the sand.




And here we are - mid-to-late-60's - with a family we holidayed with frequently. Before the days of factor 50 sun screen for kids I guess, we all look pretty tanned.






happy sepia saturday

summer sepia 6

This week's sepia summer family photos are of my brother and sister, who I love very much and don't see or talk to half often enough.




My sister followed my brother's arrival by 18 months.







I remember these little collapsible beach seats

















And by the time these photos were taken, I'd have been sleeping
in the shade somewhere, as I followed my sister's birth by only 17
months....

sepia beach 2 - costumes and caps

Continuing with my series of old family beach photos, these are some of my favourites. Though actually, most of them are my favourites.

In this first photo are my grandparents (paternal) - Harold and Win Jiggins, and Harold's sister Queen. Win and Queen are the 2 girls standing together just to the right of centre, holding hands and Queenie with a particularly clingy costume! I can't help wondering if she realised. Harold is behind and between them.
I'm pretty sure that the lady set just in front of Win and the man to her left (with the 2 boys between them) are my great grandparents, Win's mum and dad.



Aren't these costumes great! and all the women, bar none, are wearing those mob caps, most of the little girls too.


The second photo includes my Auntie Queen again sat in the water almost centre front, next to the woman holding a little boy, and with her brother - Harold, my grandad - on the other side of her. I'm pretty certain its Win, my gran, just behind and to the left of Harold holding up the seaweed.




And this last one I like best of all due to the larking about and face pulling. This really captures a moment, doesn't it?

Auntie Queen is there again, 2nd from the left at the back and I'm pretty sure that next to her on the end of the row is her mother, my great grandmother Elizabeth. Other photos of Elizabeth are formal, and serious and usually wearing glasses but I think this is her.




and just look at those costumes and caps!

Happy Sepia Saturday - more fabulous photos over here.

the garden i grew up in

Its beautiful weather here in London at the moment and I plan to spend some time in the garden this weekend.

And thinking about that led me to choose these photos for today's Sepia post - photos of the garden I grew up in.

This is the garden from my bedroom window - the bedroom I shared with my sister:


You can just see here the garage which we were occasionally allowed to climb up and sit on, one of my favourite photos which I've already posted here. Just off to the right of this photo, this side of the garage, was a pond.

And here you can see my bedroom window. And it had bars! I don't know if they came with the house (which was new when my parents bought it) - or if they put up the bars. I guess it would have been pretty unsafe and would have had to be locked without the bars.

I like the random wheels in these 2 pictures - I don't know what their story was.


My mum - with my (big) brother. Behind her you can see the beginnings of the copper beech hedge. Mum and dad sowed that when they first moved in - in my memory, it was always taller than me and was perfect for hiding in, and for birds nests.



This is just outside the back door, by the swing. My brother is facing the camera, and with backs to the camera are my sister - on the left - and me in the middle on the chair. We saw a lot of the friends we are with here, their parents were good friends of my parents.



And the swing. We loved the swing so much. It was a climbing frame - and sometimes a substitute for a tree house, we used to put planks across it and make a den. And sometimes it was just good for swinging...




And here are my parents, who loved gardens and gardening - and passed the love on to the three of us.

Sepia Stan Part 2

Two weeks ago I posted a photo of my great-uncle Stan in his Home Guards uniform and promised more to come....

..... so here is a little bit more.

I don't know much about Uncle Stan's family. He married my father's Aunt, and we saw a lot of them but I have no memories of seeing or meeting any of his own family. However we have quite a few photos of them.

This is his mother as a child, with her parents and nurse. I guess they were fairly well off.


Mabel Nellie Boswell, I don't know her date of birth.


Here Mabel is, all grown up and with her husband,

Arthur Cornelius Woodruff, born 21st November 1878.

And this is Uncle Stan - back right - his mother front left, and to the front right is his brother Ray who died in WW2.




Stan was born in August, 1906.
I thought this was the earliest photo I have of Stan, in his choir boy robes...


...but, though this photo is labelled (by my father) "unknown", I think that Stan is here, middle row 2nd from the left. What do you think? or maybe it is Ray.

sepia stan

This is just a quickie, as I am off to a seminar all of today.

Last weeks Sepia pics. were of Uncle Stan's mum and grandparents, in great hats.
This is Uncle Stan - my great Uncle.

I think he stayed home during the war because he worked for Ford, so was counted as essential to the war effort in that role - but here he is in his uniform. Looking, I thought, a little bit Bing!

I'll post more about Stan next week.

Sepia saturday

This is a section from one of the family scrap-books I've been working through, and scanning - my father's handwriting.



Uncle Stan was my great-uncle, married to Auntie (great-Auntie) Queen - I just love these pictures of his grand-parents. What relation would they be to me? I have no idea.

They look so jolly and like characters who should be in a Laurel & Hardy movie.



more Sepia Saturday here


Plus
for those of you who are following them....
tadpole update!



This was taken a week ago, so I will try and update soon as they change constantly, and have begun wiggling.....

Health & Safety in the 60's

I have such vivid memories of this. Thats me on the right, with the fair hair which didn't stay fair.

I don't know how often we were allowed to scramble up the ladder and sit on the top of the garage, but its a treat I remember well - which could indicate that it happened a lot, or that it had the impact of occasional and special privilege.

Today I'm guessing that any one - parent or otherwise - who put children into such a high-risk position might be liable to reporting by neighbours, rebuking by authorities....

School trips in the UK have become hugely complicated and difficult to organise because of risk assessment procedures, and a top "nob" in the world of Health and Safety has recently urged Schools to take more risks. I applaud the sentiment, but I can't help think that thats easy for her to say, given the way Schools are likely to be criticised - if not sued - by parents if anything goes wrong.

There have also been reports in the UK of Schools banning cake sales on the grounds of Health and Safety. I remembered this as to do with allergies and other similar hazards - thats what this report suggests with its mention of the non-lethal nature of jam. ("normally" non-lethal.... hmmm)
But a quick google reveals that this may also have been linked with the issue of childhood obesity.
For which the occasional School cake-sale is responsible..... how???

I'm so happy to have grown up in a less risk-averse age and I mourn some of the aspects of childhood which may have been lost .....


.... like sitting on garage roofs.


Other Sepia Saturday posts

Big Grandad

This is my father's family - his paternal grandparents Albert George Jiggins
and Elizabeth Ann Mundy (who became grandma Jiggins), his father Harold and his Aunty Ivy.
(Both photos will enlarge a bit if clicked)



At a glance, these pictures look as if they were taken on the same day, but Grandma's blouse is different - also, I think possibly the children look a little older in the 2nd photo?

But the children's clothes do look the same in both photos, so maybe they were wearing their Sunday best. I think my aunty Queen's dress looks a little more roomy in the first picture.

There are quite a few photos of grandpa and grandma Albert and Elizabeth Jiggins, my great grandparents. No photos from earlier stages in their lives than this, but from this sort of time onwards, and I'll post about them again some time.

My grandfather, Harold George is on the right - and he became quite interested in photography, which is why we have some lovely photos of his parents.

On the left is his sister Ivy - who became known as Queenie, who I always knew as Aunty Queen.

There was a child born between Harold and Ivy - Alfred Cecil - who died at the age of 5.

Harold, my grandad, was born in 1901 - here he is looking serious, formal and carefully nonchalant.


In this picture he strikes me as looking a little too young for that stiff collar and moustache - I see something touchingly vulnerable in this picture.



and here is a photo I love. My grandad closer to the way I knew him. We called him "Big Grandad" - he was tall, and this distinguished him from my other "Little" grandad.

This is grandad in his Home Guard uniform during WW2 - he looks really quite like John Le Mesurier from "Dads Army".



He was a lovely gentle man. I remember his quiet smile, and how he'd put an arm around me and ask how things were. And how I, teenager and embarrassed, would squirm away.



Here are other Sepia Saturday posts.

mothers

My last Sepia post was pictures of my father, who I visited last weekend and who is doing well.

Tomorrow is Mothers Day in the UK, and here she is, my wonderful mother, in a couple of fairly rare childhood photos:






and with her mother.




There are 2 Carol Ann Duffy's poems about her mother which I particularly love.

The first - Before you were Mine - reminded me when I first read it of this photo of my mum, with her 2 best friends Jean (in the middle) and Doris (on the left). They worked together, took holidays and went dancing together, and remained friends all her life.

Before You Were Mine

I'm ten years away from the corner you laugh on

with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.

The three of you bend from the waist, holding

each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.

Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.

I'm not here yet. The thought of me doesn't occur

in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows

the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance

like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close

with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it's worth it.

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?

I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,

and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square

till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,

with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?

Cha cha cha! You'd teach me the steps on the way home from Mass, stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then

I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere

in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts

where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.

Carol Ann Duffy

in Meantime, May 1993

And the second poem was published just last year and takes me back in so many ways to my mothers last weeks and days, nearly 3 years ago.

Premonition

Dedicated with love to the
memory of UA Fanthorpe

We first met when your last breath
cooled in my palm like an egg;
you dead, and a thrush outside
sang it was morning.
I backed out of the room, feeling
the flowers freshen and shine in my arms.

The night before, we met again, to unsay
unbearable farewells, to see
our eyes brighten with re-strung tears.
O I had my sudden wish -
though I barely knew you -
to stand at the door of your house,
feeling my heartbeat calm,
as they carried you in, home, home and healing.
Then slow weeks, removing the wheelchair, the drugs,
the oxygen mask and tank, the commode,
the appointment cards,
until it was summer again
and I saw you open the doors to the gift of your garden.

Strange and beautiful to see
the roses close to their own premonitions,
the grass sweeten and cool and green
where a blackbird eased a worm into the lawn.
There you were,
a glass of lemony wine in each hand,
walking towards me always, your magnolia tree
marrying itself to the May air.

How you talked! And how I listened,
spellbound, humbled, daughterly,
to your tall tales, your wise words,
the joy of your accent, unenglish, dancey, humorous;
watching your ash hair flare and redden,
the loving litany of who we had been
making me place my hands in your warm hands,
younger than mine are now.
Then time only the moon. And the balm of dusk.
And you my mother.

Carol Ann Duffy, March 2009

dad

Well we're off to see my dear old dad today, so I'm a little short of time - but an easy choice as to whose picture to post. And it seems apt, as my last 2 Sepia Saturday posts have been photos of my gran, his mother + his grandmother and great-grandmother.

Dad has had a rough patch of illness lately, but the doctor acted quickly and he seems to be doing well now - I'm so looking forward to seeing him.
It was my father's family (unlike my mother's) which was the more moneyed and had quite a lot of photos taken and even owned a camera, so theres quite a bit of choice amongst the pictures of him as a child.
Here are a couple of favourites:

Dad - Alan Henry - was born in December 1927, so this was probably taken in 1928 or possibly early 1929.



We still have this little hat - heres my Little Gem wearing it in 1995. I loved those stripey baggy trousers. And she loved that bizarre Richard Scarryesque mushroom house-thing.



The photo below was taken in 1935, when dad was 8


which we know for sure as the photo, which is hand-coloured, is in this presentation folder:




Sorry if it takes me a while to get around to visiting your blogs this weekend, I'll try to get there sooner or later...

And for other Sepia Saturday posts - look over here