Welcome to my blog, where I take pleasure in words and pictures, be they my own or those of others. I'm a creative individual, and the crafty side I explore on my 'other blog', Picking Up The Threads, which I hope you'll visit too. I'm sure you understand that I have sole copyright of my original work and any of my contributions, so please ask if you want to use them. A polite request is rarely refused. So, as they used to say on the BBC's 'Listen With Mother' radio programme, many years ago: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin."

Friday 28 November 2014

Rag Weeks and Carnivals


The earliest pictures in my album of a carnival or float are actually of my Great Aunt Maude in 1909. It’s a wonderful image but as it has already featured in my blogposts twice I’m moving further forward in time to Lincoln, England in 1971. It was the college ‘Rag Week', as far as I remember, and these were my hurried snaps of a couple of the floats. I’m afraid my memory of the event is as hazy as the images. They’re very much of their time with students dressing up as all kinds of characters and it’s difficult to see what the theme of the floats is. I’m sure we all had a lot of fun. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the origin of  “ ‘Rag' is from the act of ‘ragging’; especially an extensive display of noisy, disorderly conduct, carried on in defiance of authority and discipline.”


Further forward in time to 2001 and we’re on holiday in Cyprus during Mardi Gras festivities. The floats were somewhat more professional than the attempts of the 1971 students and it was an unexpected treat during our week’s break in the sun.


Finally, more recent images of the carnival parades here in Lanzarote over recent years. Carnival in the Canary Islands is a big event and the television channels carry coverage from all the islands over a number of weeks. Here in Lanzarote all the towns have their parade on designated days and sometimes it seems to be going on forever. Our favourite float was the magnificent steampunk design which won first prize in the parade in Arrecife, the capital, where the huge carnival parade culminates in the ceremony of The Burial of The Sardine. Here’s a post which describes some of the possible reasons for this weird celebration. Even Goya depicted it somewhere between 1812-1819.


Goya scholar Fred Licht writes about it in the Wikipedia entry  and states:

We have arrived here at the perfect balancing point between the early tapestry cartoons and the later Black Paintings.All the riotous gaiety of the former appeals to the eye from the surface of the painting. But in the darkening of the colors, in the masklike ambiguity of the faces... and especially in the overwrought gestures and expressions, one begins to feel the obscurely disturbing undertones of mass hysteria underlying the fiesta.”  

So not much has changed then; lots of gaiety, overwrought gestures and expressions and plenty of hysteria in today’s carnivals too. 

Join the parade over at Sepia Saturday where this week’s 1930 image prompted the above post.


Friday 21 November 2014

Rock On Pedro!


This is my nephew in 1975, clearly enjoying his ride on Pedro the rocking donkey. He wasn’t the first owner, that was his Mum’s cousin, who received him as a gift for his first birthday in 1966. Researching similar toys led me off in all sorts of directions; I never knew there were so many different types of donkey toy, both rocking and push-along. I’m almost sure that this one was made by Merrythought, a long-established and traditional British toy manufacturer. Their website has an interactive timeline showing the history of the family company from 1907 to the present day. Scroll forward to 1961 and you will spot the push-along version of the "particularly popular Pablo Donkey”. Yes, he was originally called Pablo and I don’t suppose anyone will remember how he came to be called Pedro instead, but Pedro he was and Pedro he is to this day.










By 1978 my nephew had outgrown Pedro and he came to live with us.  Here is my daughter being introduced to him. No, I’m not trying to pull the wool over your eyes, it really is Pedro, albeit with a new coat.









By the time he joined us he’d been so well loved that he was threadbare in places and his mane was looking a little patchy, so I asked if I might give him a makeover. I had a large quantity of very good quality fur fabric made in in a Lancashire mill, and the colour of Pedro’s coat was dictated by what I had in my fabric cupboard. He was given new reins and jingle bells and more realistic glass toy 'safety eyes’. There was no pattern of course, and from what I remember, I fashioned his coat by cutting appropriate sized pieces of fabric and sewing them to the original coat. I remember the hardest part being the ears.


Here my daughter is joined by the son of a friend, and the fact that Pedro was able to support them both uncomplainingly is testament to his sturdy and steady disposition; just like a real donkey. Who needs reins when you can dig your little fingers deep into that furry mane?





This is the last photo I have of Pedro whilst he was in our care. Shortly after this was taken we were posted to Germany with the RAF and we reluctantly parted company. He went back to his original owner to be stored for a while until his own two children had need of him. When my nephew’s son came along in 2006, Pedro was groomed and brushed ready to meet yet another new young owner, and his sister joined him a couple of years later. During this time I believe he had yet another new coat to keep him going a bit longer. The latest news is that he is about to return yet again to his original owner where he will rest until he is needed by the next generation. I wonder how many more makeovers he will have. How many tiny fingers will curl in that furry mane? We may all be long gone and patient Pedro will still be Rocking on.

This week our Sepia Saturday picture prompt featured three brothers and their dog posing for a famous sihouettist in the 1930s. One of the boys is sitting astride a toy rocking horse.


Why not join us there to see what other contributors have shared from their toybox.

Thursday 13 November 2014

Stepping Stones


Why I am dressed all in black in this photograph,  on what is obviously a hot sunny day, is a mystery. This is Toadsmouth in Derbyshire, so called because there was a rock nearby which looked like a toad! My Mum is being very sensible, sitting on the rock, the better to cool her feet in the mini-waterfall, whilst I attempt to make a crossing over the rocks. The lady behind her is a friend and I know we were on one our Sunday picnics with other families to the Derbyshire countryside from our homes in urban Nottinghamshire.


Fast forward to August 1983 and my own daughter is practising the art of walking on stepping stones. This time we were in the English Lake District, returning to one of my childhood haunts, Tarn Hows. This is a man-made beauty spot; the beck was damned in Victorian times creating the ‘tarns’. The ‘hows’ are the surrounding wooded hills.

Our Sepia Saturday prompt this week is a gentleman assisting a lady who wishes to keep her feet dry when crossing a river.



My daughter’s feet are definitely below the water and I’m sure mine were at some point in my rock-stepping; however, it mattered not one bit as we had sensibly removed our shoes. The gentleman above is being very gallant and allowing his own shoes to get soggy in the process, but who was standing with a camera ready to record the event I wonder? Was it a regular occurrence or had the normal means of crossing been lost, destroyed or submerged? We will probably never know.

Why not take off your shoes and socks and wade into the stream of sepia stories that await you at Sepia Saturday?

Thursday 6 November 2014

Fishing Trip


This is my Dad Les c 1931, with his siblings and cousins fishing for ‘tiddlers’ in the River Trent, Nottingham, when he was about ten or eleven years of age. Dad is standing behind his younger brother John (holding the fishing net) and next to his cousin Betty. Dad’s little sister Jean has hold of Betty’s brother Dougie on one side and on the other John is holding his little sister’s hand. Both girls have their dresses tucked in their knickers to save them from accidentally getting wet.




In this clip of a larger photo Dad has hold of the net but he looks decidedly worried about it. I wonder if it was shared by all the children and if they took turns to fish with it.

No-one in my family can be described as a fisherman and nobody owns a rod and line; this is is the nearest we get.


Years later Dad painted this watercolour of a young boy with his fishing net.







Here in Lanzarote locals can often be seen along the coast, standing on the rocks, fishing for their family’s supper. They are quite determined and occasionally one loses his life when he is swept from his perch by a rogue wave.











This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt features three miners in 1916 Alberta, relaxing on a fishing trip.

Why not cast your line and see what other fishy business the Sepians have been up to this week. You’re bound to catch some wonderful stories and images.