SLIDES 0481-0489
Northampton, probably 1957.
This is the bungalow that my parents either didn't want, or couldn't afford, and were persuaded into buying by my Grandfather. I don't think that I ever got the full story, but I seem to remember that it was the source of much bitter resentment in later years.
I never lived there, of course, which helps me with my claim to have bluff northern roots, but with little else. It is peculiar to think though, that, but for a few quirks of fate, my entire life, if I even got to have one at all, could have been lived in a completely different place, and surrounded by an entirely different set of people.
Meanwhile, after that philosophical aside, I notice that the mighty Rover motor-car creeps into two of these nine shots which isn't a bad percentage given my Grandfather's apparent fixation, although I suspect that I ought to give him the benefit of the doubt and point out that it was probably still rather new and, as such, a bit of a novelty and, in those days, probably something to be quite proud of if you were at the aspirational end of society's wobbly ladder.
Pride, eh...? Don't you just loathe it...?
This may demonstrate the exact point where the crucible in which my own lack of ambition would finally brew up was first put on the warming fires, more than half a decade before I was even a twinkle.
I never lived there, of course, which helps me with my claim to have bluff northern roots, but with little else. It is peculiar to think though, that, but for a few quirks of fate, my entire life, if I even got to have one at all, could have been lived in a completely different place, and surrounded by an entirely different set of people.
Meanwhile, after that philosophical aside, I notice that the mighty Rover motor-car creeps into two of these nine shots which isn't a bad percentage given my Grandfather's apparent fixation, although I suspect that I ought to give him the benefit of the doubt and point out that it was probably still rather new and, as such, a bit of a novelty and, in those days, probably something to be quite proud of if you were at the aspirational end of society's wobbly ladder.
Pride, eh...? Don't you just loathe it...?
This may demonstrate the exact point where the crucible in which my own lack of ambition would finally brew up was first put on the warming fires, more than half a decade before I was even a twinkle.
This bungalow is also, of course, where my sister spent the early formative and "only child" years of her life, surrounded by fields, and cats, and a toy rocking horse, and with her Grandparents coming to visit in their big shiny black car every once in a while to tell her how marvellous she was and filling her head with tales of real horses and their ideal life at the big house.
She did, in all fairness, and despite a few setbacks, retain her general marvellousness, but this set of pictures may, of course, explain many, many things...
What a strange set of pictures. It has the feel of a staged royal photograph shoot with best clothes, cats instead of corgis, a bungalow and not a Buckingham Palace, and the queen playing on a rocking horse in the royal garden to delight the young Princess.
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