SLIDE 0408
This is a picture of my big sister looking very happy indeed, and it's an utter joy for me to have found it, especially as I'm pretty certain that, until I scanned it, I'd never seen this photograph before.
This is a picture of my big sister looking very happy indeed, and it's an utter joy for me to have found it, especially as I'm pretty certain that, until I scanned it, I'd never seen this photograph before.
There is just so much to like in this rather wonderful photograph of her that I've extracted it from its proper place in the flow of things to give it a showcase all of its own.
Apart from the possible need for just the slightest crop to tweak the framing, I think it's actually almost the perfect embodiment of... oh, something or other.
The truth is I just like the look on her face in that moment, the way that the pattern of her dress works, and the fact that the colour of it is picked out in those old BP logos behind her, and seems, to me, to be the very essence of a perfect moment captured.
Indeed, there may be several hundred perfectly ordinary moments captured forever in my Grandfather's slide collection, but I hope that you'll agree that it really has been worth the journey ploughing through them all when you find a rare gem like this one every so often.
I imagine that they've just stopped at one of these old-style petrol outlets that used to exist before the custom-built forecourts and petrol stations to buy fuel for that old Rover car of my Grandfather's as they tour Lincolnshire. My sister had no doubt been parked on that rather convenient lump of stone and told to amuse herself to stop her from getting bored whilst the whole tedious business of refuelling gets transacted, and you can almost smell the oil and petrol fumes floating through the late afternoon air.
Then there is the glorious old-style petrol pump standing next to the Castrol and Energol display stands, and one of those fine window displays of the kind that only a place selling car parts can conjure into being. And that's all before we even consider the possibilities offered by "Pink Delivery Services" and "AutoBrite", or revel in the sheer delight of discovering the white-walled pardise that must have been the "Vanity Fayre Ladies Hairstylist" with its plastic strip curtain-adorned entrance door, and its own exciting window display, this time of the kind that only Hair Salons can create.
In fact, even that slightly dodgy cropping is beginning to grow on me, with the front of that car peeking into the frame and the implied bicycle, and if "Harold's Way" had been "The Smiths", you can almost imagine this ending up on the cover of one of their singles at the very least.
Apart from the possible need for just the slightest crop to tweak the framing, I think it's actually almost the perfect embodiment of... oh, something or other.
The truth is I just like the look on her face in that moment, the way that the pattern of her dress works, and the fact that the colour of it is picked out in those old BP logos behind her, and seems, to me, to be the very essence of a perfect moment captured.
Indeed, there may be several hundred perfectly ordinary moments captured forever in my Grandfather's slide collection, but I hope that you'll agree that it really has been worth the journey ploughing through them all when you find a rare gem like this one every so often.
I imagine that they've just stopped at one of these old-style petrol outlets that used to exist before the custom-built forecourts and petrol stations to buy fuel for that old Rover car of my Grandfather's as they tour Lincolnshire. My sister had no doubt been parked on that rather convenient lump of stone and told to amuse herself to stop her from getting bored whilst the whole tedious business of refuelling gets transacted, and you can almost smell the oil and petrol fumes floating through the late afternoon air.
Then there is the glorious old-style petrol pump standing next to the Castrol and Energol display stands, and one of those fine window displays of the kind that only a place selling car parts can conjure into being. And that's all before we even consider the possibilities offered by "Pink Delivery Services" and "AutoBrite", or revel in the sheer delight of discovering the white-walled pardise that must have been the "Vanity Fayre Ladies Hairstylist" with its plastic strip curtain-adorned entrance door, and its own exciting window display, this time of the kind that only Hair Salons can create.
It's a fantastic photograph, full of tiny detail and interest. Definitely a Smith's cover Martin.Maybe Harold sings the Smiths.
ReplyDelete"A Hatful of Harold"...?
DeleteOh boy! This brought back memories of Uncle Hedley and Auntie Lil, and happy times spent with them at Holbeach. Their son, George, was the gamekeeper for the Squire at Leaden Hall, where they had the most fabulous playroom with a beautiful rocking horse. Never saw the Squire - he lived abroad somewhere hot! Auntie Lils place was fabulous in a rather quaint way. A bath in the kitchen, all plumbed in by our Grandfather. An outside loo which was literally a hole in a wooden plank with a bucket underneath - I hated that! The most wonderful feather bed that you sunk into at night, and a "gazunder". They had chickens from which I would collect the eggs for breakfast each morning, and bullocks they raised for the meat. Fabulous memories of times long gone!
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather was a blacksmith just outside of the town Wragby in Lincolnshire. We share the same experiences of outdoor toilet planks, a tin bath, gazunders, chicken sheds. The only real difference was that in the garden were pigsties where they kept a couple of big pink pigs instead of bullocks. There was a pump by the kitchen door to draw water from a huge, twenty feet high, rainwater collecting tank. What simple ways back then and it was only the sixties.
Delete