GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 83) - UNMARKED YELLOW BOX

SLIDES 0585-0586

Okay, so it's not Switzerland, but my Grandparents did have a "chalet" in the back garden of the first house they built, and they liked it so much that they had it moved to the far smaller back garden of the second house that they built.

Where it spent the time that they lived in a flat after they sold the first and were building the second is anybody's guess, but I suspect that it wasn't spinning around in the space/time vortex having incredible adventures like some other garden sheds with two blue doors that I could mention.

Anyway, this looks a happy enough late-1960s day - despite my dark blue shirt and trousers combination - spent in the back garden of house number one, and I even look vaguely pleased to be there, sitting upon my canvas throne, if not as pleased as the rest of them appear to be.

If I could travel there now, what would I say to the frankly terrified young fellow that I would meet?

"Cheer up... Most of it never actually happened!"...?

"It's all rubbish... Give up now!"...?

"Whatever you do, don't go to art school!"...?

At the moment that these pictures were taken, a joke, I fear, may have just been told, possibly at my expense, and I suspect that I didn't understand it then, and might not even now if anyone could remember it and then repeated it to me.

Meanwhile, I suddenly find that I do recollect the occasional moments that I spent alone in that tiny little summerhouse. I seem to remember that it had a very distinctive smell which has now been brought to mind and just the memory of that odour is transporting me back there.

Was it the slightly perfumed smell of the paper lining the single drawer in the little triangular table that stood in the back left hand corner...? Or is it that faint hint of insect repellent and the dead flies that is taking me back...?

Odd, I haven't thought about either of those things in decades, and yet I'm immediately back there as if it was yesterday.

Maybe it was a time-machine after all?