Old Photos

[Slim]

My brother has been going through old photos from my mum's house and I've just retouched and enhanced this one. This was taken on the occasion of my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1970 at their home in Hartlepool. This scene consists of my grandparents, their children, their childrens' spouses, and their grandchildren - minus my brother who I think is behind the camera.

That's me on the bottom left. Only the persons in the front row, and my mum (immediately behind me) are still alive. To my left at the front are my cousin Martin, my brother Eric and my cousin Fergus.



Sorry to say that my cousins' family has been touched by tragedy to an unusual degree. My Aunt Alwyn, pictured on the right, succumbed to cancer this same year, in her mid 40s. Six years later her husband Gordon, top left here, suffered a fatal heart attack in his early 50s. And their daughter Katherine, standing between Gordon and my dad at the back, died in January 2016. I think she would have been 59.

[Nick]

Interesting tv placement!

[Slim]

I only recall this event very vaguely, but I'm sure the settee was repositioned for the photo. It usually faced the wall on the left.

[Slim]

Unfortunately my photo stash domain name (truth.justdied.com) doesn't work for some people - I think BT put it on a blacklist for spam, mistakenly of course, some time ago. I believe someone falsely reported it maliciously. I must start using a different domain name for that.

Just changed the image in the top post to a free photo hosting service (I usually just use my own web server) - let me know if it's working now? Thanks!

[captainkurtz]

Such a lovely picture.  I've taken to looking at old pictures too...makes me a little sad.  Things just seemed better back in the 70s/80s/90s, even though they probably weren't..

[Nickslikk2112]

If I'd not taken them all back up to my dad's I could have entertained you with pictures from his family albums, although for some reason I don't seem to appear in many of them...

It was on of my dad's regrets that after his parents died, his elder brother cleared out the house and burned lots of old photos and other things of interest - like his dad's accounts of how best to kill chickens

[Slim]

Just done this one as well, taken the same day of course. My brother Bill (on the left) took the first one; I think my dad would have taken this.



Bill is 10 years older than me. He would have been 20 when this was taken. Around this time he was fond of Zeppelin, Sabbath and especially Fleetwood Mac and Cream, so I was exposed to a lot of music that I wouldn't otherwise have heard at a young age.

[Slim]

Here's one I found last night, probably taken a couple of years earlier - the house where I was brought up in Hartlepool. I lived there between 1960 and 1989 and it still belongs to my Mum, although she's in a care home now. It will be sold this year, hopefully. I was last there in October.



One of the art-deco curved window panes at the front got cracked and couldn't be replaced, so new frames went in with flat panes some time in the '70s. Great shame.

[Slim]

The blue car was our Vauxhall Victor estate. My abiding memory of it is that it was like an oven on holidays in Spain. After it had been left in the sun, you had to put towels on the plastic seats to stop them burning your legs!

It had a bench front seat so I could sit between my mum and dad sometimes, though usually they made me sit in the back.

[Nick]

Long old drive to Spain from the NE.

[David L]

Beast of a car. Looked like it probably went around corners well..........

[Slim]

Long old drive to Spain from the NE.

Yes, down the A1 to Southampton then a car ferry. In the '70s they took a caravan for a few years.

But I loved the road trip down through France, it was quite the adventure. The back of the car would be absolutely crammed full of stuff behind the back seat so that we could barely see over it.

[Nickslikk2112]

But I loved the road trip down through France, it was quite the adventure. The back of the car would be absolutely crammed full of stuff behind the back seat so that we could barely see over it.

Like us when we used to go camping in Europe, the back seat was covered in sleeping bags and air beds, then three kids on top. By the time I was a teenager I used to be bent double to get in. Three days there, three days back...

[Slim]

Found an old photo among my Mum's stuff in October, so I made an updated version. Taken round the back of the house in Hartlepool.

[Slim]

It's the summer of 1972 and here I am in the Hotel Canada Palace in Calafell, playing cards with two French girls (one out of shot on the left) and a young man from Newcastle.

Even though it's August and I'm in Spain, I note that I'm wearing a vest under my t-shirt.

The tattoos on my left arm are not real. They are transfers that came free with the local Spanish lollipops (Chupa Chups).

This is the only photo I know of in which I'm wearing my Timex diver's watch. I loved that watch and wore it 24/7, which is the reason that my left wrist is slimmer than the right one. It had an adjustable countdown bezel, very handy for exams.