Season’s Greetings

Some of the oldest family Christmas cards in my collection. The one above, depicting a jolly Victorian coach scene, was sent by my mother to my father during WW2. The couple are also shown inside the card, where they have joined others in skating on a frozen lake. Scenes like these were typical at this time and also into the fifties; I remember that similar ones would also appear on chocolate box lids.

The one below was sent by Dad to Mum and and my brother, from the same era. Dad was in the RAF, stationed at Swinderby, and I’m guessing it was hard for him to get away to buy a more appropriate card.

The front of the card was very simple, with a small RAF symbol in the middle of a cream background. Inside, the greeting was very straightforward, but Dad managed to personalise it in his beautiful copperplate handwriting. He still thought of Mum as his sweetheart as they’d only been married two years, but in fact she remained so for the next seventy. It was one of his many terms of endearment.








My brother sent his own card with a line-drawn snowman. The card stated that it was hand coloured, but not by my brother who was far too young. The greeting on the back is in Mum’s handwriting, but my brother has been instructed to add some kisses to Daddy and there are a handful of spidery pencilled crosses.

When he was older I’m sure my brother would have made his own Christmas cards, just as my own children did in the 1980s. Most parents, and grandparents, will tell you that these are the real treasures; the cards are often made at school and frequently covered in shiny paper and glitter.

For years, both my children made their own cards; many were inventive and creative, but here are a couple of their early attempts.

My son’s Three Kings, one of whom appears to be happily distracted, and the message inside my daughter’s card, in which she has thoughtfully shown herself and her brother.

This is my contribution to the Christmas and New Year edition of Sepia Saturday, where our prompt image, below, is from the Flickr Commons collection of the Cloyne District Historical Society, the Muriel and John Van Ness album.

It only remain for me to say to all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. see you all in 2018.

Snowbabies

This little snowbaby is me aged about three years in the mid 1950s. It has only recently come to light, when a loose negative fell from an old album. The print was nowhere to be found, so this is a scan of that negative. It’s the only photo of me in the snow as film was precious and usually only used on high days and holidays. I don’t even know where it was taken.

This snowbaby is my daughter aged two, in the back garden of our married quarters at RAF Wittering in 1979. Her baby brother was only a few months old at the time and was probably tucked up warm and snug in his cot.

A couple of years later he was joining his sister in the front garden of our married quarters at RAF High Wycombe. Incredibly, only a few weeks before at Easter, it had been hot enough for them to play in the paddling pool.

Here are his twin snowbabies in their own back garden in Kent. The slide is covered in several inches of snow but that didn't stop my granddaughter.

Join us today at Sepia Saturday to see how other contributors responded to the prompt image of an empty Crookes Valley Park, Sheffield* around forty years ago. No hardy souls are braving the slide and swings here; they were probably all out sledging and building snowmen.

*Image by Alan Burnett

Quite a Catch

Small boy, big fish - my husband, aged seven, looking very pleased with his catch. His family would spend part of the long Summer break from school, in Anglesey, North Wales. They usually stayed in a cottage very near the beach. His father would join them for the part of the holiday, when work allowed, but for most of the time he, his mother and siblings enjoyed catching up with friends. The same families would visit the area every year, and while the mums chatted, knitted and drank tea from a Thermos flask, the younger ones would go off and explore.

One of the families owned a boat and would take the my husband and his father out fishing. He would sit at the back of the boat ‘spinning’ for mackerel and one day caught the bream, shown in the picture. Like the small boy in the prompt photo, he doesn’t look too sure how to hold it. These days he would hold it at arm’s length, or preferably not at all. He doesn’t eat fish, or any sort of seafood, and if we find ourselves near a fish stall on our travels, we have to hurry past quickly. This is rather a shame as we live on an island, and not far from our home is a village renowned for its seafood restaurants.

I wonder if the subject of the prompt picture actually liked to eat fish. We’ll never know. I must admit when I was 'trawling’ through Flickr Commons for the next batch of Sepia Saturday prompts, this one  had to go into the net. Both little boys are very endearing and I still consider my husband quite a catch.

Join us this week to see what stories and pictures others have shared, inspired by the tiny fisherman below.

There’s Something About Mary

There’s definitely something about our particular Mary. Today, this remarkable lady is 97 years old. She was born in 1920, lived through the Depression, served in WW2, married in 1942 and celebrated seventy years of happy marriage. She had her share of sadness, losing her brother when she was a teenager, and twin babies when a young woman. But she also had much happiness in her life and gave so much love to others.

She is a clever, artistic, creative woman who could play the piano and accordion, draw, sew and knit. A great reader and a lover of literature, poetry and the theatre, she taught us so much

She was widowed five years ago tomorrow, and lived independently for a few more years after that. More frail now, and with a rapidly fading memory, she lives contentedly in a care home. She’s my much loved Mum, but also a Mother-in-Law, grandma, and great grandma. I’ve written about Mary and her life many times on this blog, and her stories and anecdotes have been a rich source of material for my Sepia Saturday posts. To celebrate her 97 years here’s something about our very own Mary in a gallery of pictures.

Babyhood and Childhood 

Growing from Teenage to Womanhood

Mother and Mother-in-Law 

Grandma and Great Grandma

Loyal wife of seventy years

Remembrance

Today is Remembrance Day, when we wear our poppies and remember the fallen of two World Wars, and many conflicts since. I have covered this subject several times in previous posts, but when I put the word in the search bar for my photos, I came up with remembrance of a different kind.

The first is taken from Great Aunt Maude’s autograph album, written by a friend in April 1919, and beautifully illustrated .

The second is a pretty postcard which I bought at an antiques fair. The writer appears to be a schoolboy writing to his auntie on her birthday. He tells her he hasn’t had the cane yet at school! The postcard is 4th July 1919; it was obviously a year when the word remembrance was at the forefront of people’s minds. 

The address is Stanley Cottages, Guildford Road, Farnham, Surrey. I couldn’t find it on the modern map or Google Street View, although there are some houses labelled as Stanley Villas. The writer also appears to be called Stanley!

I spent a little time researching Miss K Blackman, but the nearest I could find was in the 1939 census, a married woman, Mrs Kate Blackman, living at 4 Guildford Road. Her date of birth was 16th September 1874, so it wasn’t her birthday being remembered. I expect that they were related in some way however; and it’s not just co-incidence that two K. Blackmans lived at similar addresses. Perhaps her husband Fred (born 1877) had a sister called Kate or Kitty, who lived next door.

Auntie Kate, or Kitty, obviously treasured the card from her nephew and kept the Remembrance safe for many years. As is the way with such memorabilia, it probably was disposed of her at her death, or that of a relative who had also been its guardian. I’m pleased to have given it an airing here, and who knows, perhaps a member of the Blackman family will be able to enlighten me one day. As is the nature of we Sepians, we can’t help being curious about what the postcard writer (and recipient) looked like. An old photo would be the icing on the cake.

Join other contributors to this week’s Sepia Saturday, for more tales of old photos and postcards.

Doorway Fashion

Here is my Great Aunt Maude c1925 inviting us through the gateway of a house, where she was probably lodging. I have the original, which is very small and printed on quite thin photographic paper. It was most likely taken by a friend, using Maude’s own camera. She would also have developed it herself, as she was a keen amateur.

Maude was born in 1893 and is probably in her early to mid-thirties here. She was unmarried, and working, so could afford to dress in the fashions of the time. By now women were cutting their hair short and wearing clothes which hid their feminine curves. The garçon look was very typical at this time; in stark contrast to the long hair and S shaped silhouette before the war. Waists were dropped and hemlines rose to just below the knee. Flat chests and narrow hips completed the shape. Maude is also wearing bar strap shoes which were popular throughout much of the 1920s.

I remembered this photograph when Alan posted the one below a few weeks ago on his own blog, News from Nowhere, so when he chose it as this week’s Sepia Saturday prompt, I plucked my own snap of Maude, quite literally, from the shoebox.

They make a nice pairing. Alan’s is the girl at No 24, but as Maude is standing slightly to one side I have no idea of the door number. Both images have similarly spiked fencing and brickwork, although no 24 appears to have a rather nice tiled front path and a shallow step. Both images are damaged slightly as no 24 has a a ghost image of the fence and gateway to the right, overlaying no 22, and Maude’s has a thumbprint, in all likelihood her own, on the left.

The girl at no 24 is also much younger than Maude and the photo itself could belong in a slightly earlier time, before 1920, (when bar strap shoes first appeared) and when higher waists and sashes were popular.

Both ladies have charming smiles and seem to be equally proud of their houses and their fashion sense.

Just fifty or so years after Alan’s picture, I too became the girl at no 24, when I moved with my parents and brother to what would be the family home for many years to come. Sadly all our photos of that house are of the interior and garden, and even the street outside, but not the front door, and certainly none of me posing in front of the door. Great Aunt Maude once again, has come to the rescue.

From the Desk of.......

This is my late sister-in-law Gill, looking a little unhappy at being asked to pose at her desk. She was probably in the middle of doing accounts and checking bookings and other paperwork for the holiday apartments she and her husband ran in Devon in the 1980s. It’s taken about 1983 but the desk is a lot older of course.

And this is me, looking all efficient and headteacherly in my newly refurbished office, during my last headship. The photo was probably for the newly created school website. By then I was no longer teaching and the job had become a mixture of many admin roles; dealing with the school budget, liaising with the education authority, Social Services and the Diocese (as it was a Church school), overseeing building works, staff appointments, showing parents round etc, etc. On good days I actually spent time with pupils. When the office was getting too much to bear, I went on my rounds of the classrooms and enjoyed the company of the children. I didn't sit at my desk for too long at a stretch if I could help it; I had an open-door policy most of the time, which meant someone was usually popping in. There would also be meetings and courses to attend, often off-site.

By contrast, here are some good old fashioned school desks - well 1974 vintage - made of wood! This is m first ever class at a school in Lincoln. The children were rehearsing for a play, though I don’t remember which. Strange to think, that at twenty-two, I was only about twelve or so years older than them. Many of them will now be parents and grandparents themselves!

Here are my own two playing companionably together at the desk in my daughter’s room c1983. Both computer literate and with artistic skills, these days, back then my son was computer mad and my daughter was the one writing journals and painting. My son now uses his IT skills in his work and my daughter has a sideline to her regular job, where she designs and makes bespoke earrings, dreamcatchers etc. This photo sums them up quite well.

This is the Sepia Saturday prompt image which inspired the above post. Why not see what other contributors made of it?

Betty Ayles, 20 May 1911 (Sutton Archives via The Past on Glass on Flickr)

Who Has Control?

A question any one of the four adults in the party might have been asking with reference to our four-year old twin grandchildren. The occasion was Remembrance Sunday 2012, the place was the Historic Dockyard Chatham. In fact the twins, although very young, behaved impeccably. Let’s face it a tour of a WW2 Destroyer, 1960s submarine and Victorian warship, are not on every child’s wishlist and we wondered if they would get bored and fidgety; instead they thoroughly enjoyed scrambling over HMS Cavalier, the Destroyer, and were in buoyant mood. This lifted our spirits at what was a very sad time. We had flown over to say our goodbyes to my seriously ill father, who passed away just two weeks later. of course we combined the trip with a quality time spent with the twins and their parents.

In the event the Dockyard proved a fascinating place and we didn’t manage to cover everything that day. There was also a temporary exhibition called ‘Whirrs, Cogs and Thingumybobs’ which I've written about elsewhere.

Here we are aboard HMS Cavalier, a Royal Navy C-class destroyer of WW2.

The Bridge, where they took turns to issue orders, and the room where the helmsman received orders from the Bridge.









Below, Office and the Operations Office (later the Ops Room) full of interesting knobs and dials.

And aboard the Victorian warship HMS Gannet. This was fun and the twins are happy to have joint control. It appears to be the wheel that positions the guns.

And in the radio room of the RNLI lifeboat Edward Bridges (1974). Everyone can relax, the twins have control of the situation again.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt image was a 1948 B-36 cockpit, with far more dials, knobs and levers than any of the above. Why not visit to see what other contributors made of it.

Look, What Can You See?

Guess who this is looking out of the window with her daddy? I've no memory of it of course, because it’s about sixty four years ago. Dad was around thirty one or two, but looks older somehow. Perhaps it’s the bow tie; not something I saw him wear very often in his life. He was clearly trying to get me to focus on something, rather than look at the photographer, and I appear a little bemused.

It’s a shame that light got into the camera and I’ve been unable to enhance this any more to sharpen up the image, which is tiny anyway. I seem to be wearing my best frock (with a good hem to let down as I grew) and baby shoes with buttons. I’m not sure what the top garment is; perhaps a knitted bolero or something similar with short sleeves. On the window ledge is a biscuit barrel. We always had one and it usually contained a mixture of Rich Tea biscuits, Custard Creams and pink wafers. In later years Mum told me she had to stop re-filling it, as Dad was eating too many with his evening cocoa!

I’d probably just learned to walk and was still a bit shaky on my feet; in any case Dad is making sure I don't fall and his arms are encircling me. I may not have a memory of it but it’s how I like to think of my father. He was a very tactile, protective and loving man. He also showed me many things in my life. He had an artist’s eye for detail and encouraged me to observe things before trying to draw or paint them. “Look, what can you see?”  but sadly I didn’t inherit his artistic talents.

For more windows and small children looking out, visit this week’s Sepia Saturday, where our prompt image is young Prince Charles looking out of Buckingham Palace on the occasion of his mother’s coronation.

Make Do and Make Believe

Children have the ability, which sometimes as adults we lack, to imagine everyday objects into an adventure. As a parent and teacher I have witnessed chairs and tables being utilised to make dens, cars and boats. I have recollections of my own childhood, using my mother’s ‘clothes horse’ with sheets draped over, to make a tent, into which I would gather my favourite toys; teddies, dolls and books. On seaside holidays the sand could be shaped into anything we wished, not just a fairy castle or mermaid’s tail.

Am I being a mermaid here in 1955?  

My own children in the mid 1980s whilst visiting their grandparents, used cushions, chairs and a tennis racquet to fashion a car (or motor-boat) that would take them and a family of dolls of on a trip somewhere.

We built a ship upon the stairs

All made of the back-bedroom chairs,

And filled it full of sofa-pillows.

to go sailing on the billows.                 

Robert Louis Stevenson; A Good Play

By 2010 our twin grandchildrenwere sailing away in a sand boat, with beach spades for oars.

When I am in my ship I see

The other ships go sailing by.

A sailor leans and calls to me

As his ship goes sailing by.

Across the sea he leans to me,

Above the wind I hear him cry:

“Is this the way to Round-the-World?”

He calls as he goes by.

      A.A. Milne: Nursery Chairs

Where shall we adventure today that we’re afloat,

Wary of the weather and steering by a star?

Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,

To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?

Robert Louis Stevenson: Pirate Story

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is ‘Chldren Riding a make-Believe Horse’. They have used some objects (probably with adult help) to fashion a vaguely horse-like shape. I hope they didn’t try to feed their horse as he has a sharp muzzle! The little girl has a whip made of grass, but she seems to be unwittingly tickling her brother’s nose with the end of it.

City of Vancouver Archives. Public Domain