Old (in) New York

60 years ago today - the fifth of my annual birthday portraits in front of the family radiogram.

This morning you find your roving reporter at the front end of a 10 day stay with my cousin and her family in New York. Interestingly, a couple of things will have changed forever by the time I return to Old Blighty next week. 1) All future visits to my barber on a Monday or Tuesday will be £5 cheaper than previously, and, of even greater significance, 2) My local pub will apparently give me a 10% discount every Thursday. The reason? Today I turn  65....sixty bloody five! Like the t-shirt says, it's weird being the same age as old people, but at least those are two somewhat positive points of my extreme dotage.

I'm obviously writing this ahead of time, but my cousin has already let it slip that they've made plans for my, ahem, big day, even though I will only just have flown into the country and will therefore probably be a complete mess. I can barely make it past 8pm when I'm on home turf these days, so attempting to stay awake, alert and coherent late into the evening of my first day in a different time zone is going to be something of a challenge, to say the least. In a restaurant on the first evening of a New York trip about 20 years ago, after being awake for 24 hours, I momentarily forgot to open my eyes again when blinking and very nearly ended up face first in my meal. I'll let you know how I get on this time round.

Our old pal Brian pointed me in the direction of Community Radio's 'Look Now You're Cursed' nine long years ago and I still spin it regularly. This one seemed appropriate today.

Community Radio - Old New York

Friday Photo #64

It's the Spring of 1964 and I've just arrived home after a little rough and tumble down the park at the end of the road, probably instigated by the lad across at No.13 ringing the doorbell and, with all the innocence he could muster, asking Mum '...is Swede playing out?' My shirt hangs loose from beneath a favourite cardigan, one that I will outgrow within a matter of weeks. The wellies are still on and a plaster just above my left knee covers the most recent scrape in a childhood full of scuffs, cuts and grazes. Look at that face though - properly over-excited. The reason? It's right behind me. While I was out, Dad (and probably Uncle Ivor) had installed a full sized swing at the bottom of the garden - a swing! Actually at this point it's just the metal frame cemented into the ground, but the all important hanging bit would materialise shortly afterwards. The swing's arrival was a complete surprise and I'm impishly as pleased as punch about it.

On and off for a handful of young summers, that swing at the end of the garden was central to my world. The frame alone became a mini-chicane as I careered around the garden on a succession of scooters and bikes, it also formed the goalposts for a thousand kickabouts (reducing Mum's grass to a muddy swamp in the process) and it substituted as a Bat-pole for my imaginary adventures as the Caped Crusader. All this in addition to being a, y'know, swing! 

I've no idea (and irritatingly never thought to ask) how Dad acquired this magical plaything that made me the envy of my infant school pals and equally I have absolutely no recollection of it being dug up and removed from the garden a few years down the line, after I'd outgrown it it. The scruffy little scamp in the photo couldn't give a hoot about the details though. What larks he's going to have.

Mice Parade - Swing

Friday Photo #63

It's the summer of 1974. Go down to the bottom of my road, through the park, round the edge of the allotments beyond, on past the cricket pitches, then over the Lea Flood Relief Channel and you'd eventually find yourself in a remote open wasteland, criss-crossed by railway lines. It was the kind of no man's land where all sorts of mischief took place. Where burned out husks of cars, vans and fridges sat rusting and abandoned and where smashed bottles, broken bricks and jagged chunks of metal littered every surface. In short, it was our playground. Oblivious to the inherent danger of cuts and bruises from all of the dumped rubbish, or bloodied noses from the bigger boys who invariably loitered menacingly nearby, my mates and I often headed down there when nothing else was going on. And yes, each of us at one time or another, returned home with a cut, a bruise, a bloody nose, or occasionally all three.

In one area, a crude mud track had been carved out by the bigger boys on their mopeds and whenever they were otherwise occupied, no doubt giving some other poor unsuspecting youngster a bloody nose, we would hare around it on our bikes. Yay, yet more opportunities for cuts and bruises! And here I am, haring around that very track 50 years ago, long hair and flares flailing in the breeze, a vision in colour co-ordinated clothing. But what colour is that jeans/jumper combo exactly? Mauve? Purple? Violet? Scarlet? Vermillion? Who knows, but it sure ain't pretty and the fashion police have most definitely been informed. 

The good news to end on is that the dangerous sprawling urban wasteland of my youth is now home to a spacious nature reserve and lengthy walking trail.

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I'm sending today's tune out to our mutual blogging chum John Medd, as I reckon it fits in rather neatly with his recent Philip Glass/Steve Reich/John Adams post.

Hauschka - Blue Bicycle

Friday Photo #59

My maternal grandmother remarried late in life and thus Uncle Ted became the only male grandparent figure I'd ever have. He worked at the Leyton Orient football ground (in those days known simply as Orient) in the 1960s and frequently took me with him to home matches. Uncle Ted served in both wars, though, like so many, never discussed the horrors he undoubtedly witnessed - a fuller picture only emerging after his death with the discovery of his photos, papers and medals. Sadly he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1970 and passed away in 1972. Here we are in 1965.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Hammer Song

Friday Photo #58

Half-time in the back garden, circa 1969

As I've mentioned a number of times on these pages, my cousin and I grew up as virtual brother and sister throughout the 1960s and early 1970s - me with my Mum and Dad downstairs, she with her parents upstairs. These days she lives in New York, but we'll be catching up this weekend when she makes a flying visit to see her Mum in London. We're probably a bit too long in the tooth for a kickabout though. 

Parquet Courts - Total Football

Friday Photo #45

It strikes me that I haven't posted any old family photos in this series for a while. To compensate, here's a real favourite of mine from 1961. There's absolutely nothing that I don't like about this shot. The swan stretching in anticipation, Mum delicately proffering a piece of bread and me craning forward to get a better look at the situation. The whole scene is brilliantly captured by Dad. I'm not certain of the location, but I'd put money on it being somewhere in the vicinity of Wanstead Flats.

Can - Sing Swan Song

Friday Photo #30

The first two or three years seemed to pass slowly, perhaps because I was concentrating so much on Mum's health and wellbeing back then, but suddenly it's 15 years ago today that Dad died. Who knows where the time goes. He'd not been in great health for a number of years, though the end came very quickly and unexpectedly. I won't go into it all again now, but I wrote about that day in some detail here. 

The family archive contains many photos of me as a youngster as well as plenty of me with Mum and other relatives. Photos of me with Dad are less plentiful for the simple reason that he was the family photographer. Here's a fun one though, of us in 1964 on a seaside miniature railway, no doubt taken by Mum as she shouted at Dad to make sure I held on! That's us two thirds of the way back, with Dad obeying Mum's instructions to the letter and me smiling at the camera like butter wouldn't melt. 

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Spencer Krug is a prolific Canadian musician, one of those artists whose output, across several simultaneous bands, is a devilishly tricky business to keep up with. I have nothing in the collection by Fifths of Seven or Moonface for instance, but I do own fine albums by Frog Eyes, Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake and these guys. If you know only one song by Wolf Parade, it's probably this corker. 

Wolf Parade - You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son

Friday Photo #23

Every now and then, when the whim takes me, I reach into the cupboard and retrieve an album, box or carrier bag full of old family photos to rifle through and usually manage to uncover a snapshot or two that I've either not seen in an eternity or else completely forgotten about - this week's Friday Photo falls firmly into the latter category. It's my first full class photo (up to that point we'd only ever been photographed individually) taken in the playground of my Infants School in May 1967, a couple of months before all us kids went our separate ways, scattered around the Junior schools of Waltham Forest. When I look along the faces of those fidgety children today, I find that I can put names to very few of them, in stark contrast to similar class photos I've found that were taken in Junior school over the next couple of years, where I recognise and remember virtually everyone. I suppose it was all a very long time ago. Anyway, enough of my waffle - would anyone like to hazard a guess as to which of the assembled seven-year-olds above is a young yours truly? I've shared quite a few old snaps over the years, so it shouldn't prove too difficult.

Just over a week ago, our mutual friend John Medd put a shout out for good examples of non-Beach Boys Beach Boys songs. Here's one by The Super Stocks from 1964. To be up front and honest, The Super Stocks were led by writer/producer Gary Usher who actually worked with Brian Wilson & co on a number of occasions back in the day, but that doesn't detract from the fun fun fun of 'School is a Drag'. Incidentally, Usher hedged his bets on this subject by issuing a different version of the same song, also in 1964, under the guise of The Wheel Men entitled 'School is a Gas'.

The Super Stocks - School is a Drag

Friday Photo #22

Wanstead Flats in North East London, is a detached slab of the ancient woodland Epping Forest - a 334 acre oasis of green in an otherwise heavily built up area. On Sundays, when we didn't go wandering the streets of Central London, Dad and I would often head over to the Flats. It was his old manor, an area he'd enjoyed walking around as a youngster himself. There we'd kick a ball about, play a few impromptu overs of cricket or just sit at the edge of  Dames Road Pond watching the older kids and their Fathers sailing their model yachts, a very popular weekend activity in that location in those days. After much pleading, Dad eventually brought me my own miniature yacht, made of wood and around 18 inches long, which we took over the Flats one Sunday. It was a thing of beauty, painted a glossy sky blue, with crisp white canvas sails. I was excited - over excited. As soon as Dad sat the yacht on the water and gave it the gentlest push I freaked out. We were at the mercy of the wind, which was the whole point of it for most people, but I was convinced that it was never coming back to shore. It did of course, eventually, but by then I'd made such a colossal fuss that I don't remember Dad ever taking it out with us again. Instead the yacht spent the remainder of my childhood on, and later in, a cupboard in my bedroom, before disappearing from my life completely, in that mysterious way that things do. 

I can't lay my hands on a photo of the yacht in question right at the moment, but here I am, all dressed up in my Sunday best, over the Flats one Sunday morning in 1967. 

Marc Bolan - Over the Flats (Home Demo)

Friday Photo(s) #18

One day in the mid-1980's, very quietly, without fuss or announcement, Dad stopped eating meat. Never once, from that moment until he passed away in 2007, did I ever hear him use the word vegetarian to describe himself, yet he never ate meat again. He'd simply finally reached the point where he could no longer square his love of animals with the consumption of dead flesh. He made no big deal of it, felt no obligation to justify his decision and never attempted to persuade anyone else to do the same thing. It was purely a line he felt he could no longer cross. Indeed, Mum continued to be a meat-eater for the rest of her life and it was a further 5 or 6 years until I became a vegetarian.

Dad's love of animals extended well beyond our family pets. Mum's eyes would roll as she'd tell me about car journeys delayed by Dad pulling up to rescue a injured bird (they then drove around for a couple of hours looking for a vet to leave it with) or, in this particular case from 1983, to free a sheep caught in a barbed wire fence on a remote country lane. He wouldn't use any tools to do the job as he neither wanted to accidentally hurt the sheep or damage the fence, so he untangled it painstakingly by hand. The sheep remained calm throughout the lengthy process apparently, seemingly well aware that Dad was friendly and there to help.   

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Today's soundtrack is provided by Welsh guitarist Toby Hay, who has released three albums under his own name, another in tandem with Jim Ghedi plus a number of EPs. 'Sheep Song' is Hay's contribution to the 2020 Tompkins Square compilation album 'Imaginational Anthem Vol. X'. 

Toby Hay - Sheep Song

Friday Photo #12

I have no idea how my parents persuaded me to sit on this little horse, let alone ride it, so timid was I at three years of age. I appear to be having fun nevertheless. The year is 1963. The venue? Possibly London Zoo, but that's just a guess. How cool is the lady guiding the horse though? I like to imagine her nipping off to meet friends at the 2i's in Soho after work, for an evening of fab tunes and frothy coffee.

Here's a really fab tune, albeit from the early 1970s rather than the early 1960s. The LP 'Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening' by The Keith Tippett Group was originally issued on the legendary Vertigo swirl label in 1971. A copy in decent condition will now set you back an eyewatering sum, should you be lucky enough to find one. Even reissues from 2012 are changing hands for £50 plus, so I'll have to stick with the CD for now.

The Keith Tippett Group - Black Horse

Friday Photo #10

In early 1960, after nearly five years of marriage, my parents got a mortgage on a house in Walthamstow. The cost of the house? £1100. When we moved out of London in 1975, Dad sold the house for £11,000. A quick search online tell me that my childhood home is now worth (depending on its current state) in the region of £750,000, which is making my eyes water to be honest. Anyway, I digress, in 1960 £1100 was a massive stretch for my folks - Mum was expecting me any day and Dad worked in a shop selling electrical goods. It was a big house for one family and their plan was to rent out upstairs, which is where my Aunt and Uncle enter the picture. My cousin came along in 1963, which is how we grew up as Brother and Sister, each with an extra set of parents on hand. Dad's investment was a shrewd one. It was also the only time in his life that he took out a loan. He never owned a credit card and was an old fashioned believer in saving up for everything he wanted to buy.

Though we had a toilet downstairs, the only bathroom in the house was upstairs, in my Aunt and Uncle's part of the house, which we did use by arrangement, but other options were explored from time to time. For instance, for a period in the early 1970's we used a foldaway plastic shower in our kitchen, with hot water that had to be manually pumped up to pressure. It was an enormous faff to unpack, erect, empty and pack away again. Perhaps Dad was considering having another bathroom installed downstairs, though that of course would have entailed taking on a sizeable loan, which he would've been unwilling to do

As a very young boy I bathed in a metal bath on the floor of the kitchen, or, if it was particularly cold, in the living room in front of  the paraffin stove. But before that, way back in June 1961, I and my rubber duck still splashed about in a plastic tub on the living room table - which is where you find me in the photo above. What a little angel!

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Here's Stephen Coates (aka The Clerkenwell Kid) in his guise as leader of The Real Tuesday Weld. The band employed an attractive retro/electronica hybrid that had me picking up a fistful of their albums throughout the noughties. 'Bathtime in Clerkenwell' from 2002, comes with an animated video by Alex Budovsky (the first of a number of collaborations), while the origins of the song itself go back to 'Sweeter Than Sugar', a 1934 number by The Mills Brothers.

The Real Tuesday Weld - Bathtime in Clerkenwell

The Mills Brothers - Sweeter Than Sugar

Friday Photo #7

My aunt, my cousin and I in 1967

I'm just back from visiting my aunt in East London. She turns 92 in a couple of weeks and hasn't seen her New York based daughter in 18 months, but is nevertheless in remarkably fine fettle. I'm pretty damned sure that I couldn't have handled lockdown in total solitude as stoically as she has. Typically, she managed to find a few odd jobs for me to do around the house in the crippling heat of the past few days. As a result I've been climbing ladders, crawling around floors, deciphering impenetrable flatpack instructions and running a series of relatively straight forward repairs, all the while being updated on the marital and employment statuses of each of the respective families of my aunt's many former neighbours. The former neighbours themselves are all long dead, but my aunt continues to keep in contact with successive generations of their families, who are now scattered around the country.

I pulled out my phone on Wednesday evening for a surprise Skype call with my cousin, her husband and two of their kids. My aunt is fairly hard of hearing and struggled to catch the majority of the conversation, but they could see each other, which meant the world to all concerned. I automatically drifted into chirpy-jokey mode during the call, if I hadn't there would probably have been tears all round. 

I can't be with my aunt for her 92nd birthday and obviously neither can her daughter at the moment, so we're immensely grateful to one of the children of those former neighbours, now a parent of a grown up child of her own, who is making the journey to London to visit her on the big day.

Jethro Tull - Back to the Family

Friday Photo #5

I had a more recent photo in mind for this week, but following Alyson's recent post which featured her memories of family caravan holidays from years gone by, here's one from my own family archive, starring my cousin and I at the Jaywick Martello Tower Caravan Park in 1965. My aunt, uncle and cousin all lived in the same house as my family at the time and, for a couple of years at least, we even took our holidays together, their tiny box caravan next door to ours. That's the aforementioned Martello Tower in the background.

Today my Mum, Dad and Uncle are all gone. My cousin lives in New York with her husband and two of her remarkable kids (the oldest and youngest are at home, her middle kid is at college in California), while my aunt, now nearly 92, lives alone in East London. The pandemic and ensuing travel restrictions have ensured that my cousin hasn't been able to visit her mum for nearly 18 months - she's understandably desperate to be able to do so. She plans to make at least a flying visit to the UK as and when the current rules on self-isolation ease and return for a longer stay in the Autumn. I have a week off work fast approaching, during which I aim to spend a couple of days with my aunt and make a Skype call to my cousin while I'm there, so they can at least see each other for a few minutes - even if my aunt probably won't be able to hear very much of the conversation. 

The other reason for choosing this particular photo is that today just happens to be my cousin's birthday. She's three years younger than me, so it's not quite the big one - that's next year, but I'm sure she'd say that it's big enough! She's my closest confidante and oldest friend. I love her dearly and can't wait for the day when I too can see her and her family face to face again.

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A number of notable musical figures have blotted their respective copybooks of late, sharing ill-considered (not to mention dangerous) views on the pandemic, masks, vaccinations, or all of the above. Morrissey (unsurprisingly), Noel Gallagher, Eric Clapton Ian Brown, Richard Ashcroft and, erm, Right Said Fred, all spring to mind as recent offenders. Long time curmudgeon-in-chief Van Morrison has even released songs containing daft lyrics like '...scientists making up crooked facts...' It's all thoroughly depressing and a very far cry from this scintillating, jumpsuited performance with The Band at The Last Waltz in 1976.

Friday Photo #4

Dad had a great eye for composition. If I was lining up this photo in the digital age, I'd probably click off a dozen shots and pick the best of the bunch, but he got it in one, in spite of its slightly wonky perspective. There I am (wearing my favourite jacket once again) leaning very mischievously in towards my pal, who appears to approve of whatever innocent skulduggery I have in mind. In the background, two more anonymous kids, very possibly up to a similar amount of no good. We're all sitting in the local park, where I spent a huge amount of my time as a kid, with friends or with my folks - and there's a decent amount of photographic evidence in the family archives to prove it. 

I'd disappear from the house with Mum's '...be home in time for tea...' invariably ringing in my ears, walk down the road knocking for one or two chums along the way ('...hello Mrs Smith, can Billy play out?...') before stopping off at Cissy Green's shop for a bag of sweets. I dread to think how or from where she got her stock, but it would always be thrown haphazardly around the shop floor in open cardboard boxes, I don't remember any shelving. This was long before the era of 'best before' or 'use by' dates - crisps from Cissy Green's would frequently be rubbery, sweets teeth-shatteringly rock hard and biscuits would often have an unpleasantly musty, crumbliness about them. Everything was cheap though, cheaper than the many other corner shops in the area, so it was a regular haunt for me, my pals and our meagre resources. Cissy was a formidable lady who'd sit in the corner on a wooden chair, wrapped in a grubby pinny with a cigarette permanently hanging from her lips. A substantial mountain range of ash grew from the floor at her slippered feet and a fug of smoke billowed around her hairnet. There was no counter and there was certainly no customer service at Cissy Green's. I'd rummage around for a while, hold a bag of sweets or crisps up and she'd shout out the price, '...a penny ha'penny love...' Then I'd warily edge over to her to pay. She'd snatch the coins from my hand and drop them straight into her pocket - there was no till in the shop either.

It was a short walk down the narrow alley that ran alongside Cissy Green's, to the park entrance. With no watch, no sense of time and no hurry, I'd be out for hours, eventually returning home with a bloody knee, a ripped shirt, or minus a lost football. Those were different times. After Cissy Green's closed down in the mid-1960s, her shop stood empty for a couple of years before being demolished. The narrow alley became a fully fledged road, connecting the street where I lived to another beyond and the once quiet cul-de-sac now leads to a busy industrial estate.

Billy Stewart - Sitting in the Park

Friday Photo #2

Here's a photo taken on June 18th 1955 - 66 years ago today. Mum and Dad, newly wed, being greeted with a storm of confetti outside St Andrew's Church, situated on the Barking Road in Plaistow, East London. They enjoyed a long and happy marriage until Dad passed away very suddenly in 2007, with Mum re-joining him in 2010. It was only when clearing my parents' house that I found their wedding photos up in the loft, buried in a box of general family ephemera. I'd never seen them before. I've previously shared my absolute favourite of the bunch, a beautiful shot taken at the alter (here) and whereas that one captures the solemnity of their vow-exchanging, today's example really exudes the communal joy and happiness of their big day.

To soundtrack the photo is an appropriately titled slice of the Bakersfield Sound, produced by Buck Ram and released in 1961. 

Georgia Lynn - On Your Wedding Day

Big Ben Rock

Digging through some old photos recently, I came across this one, taken by Dad on one of our many Sunday outings around London in the mid-1960s. We hit a lot of well known spots on that particular day, several of which he documented with his trusty camera. Dad worked in busy hi-fi shops on both High Holborn and Oxford Street during this period, but enjoyed wandering the relatively quiet streets of the city on Sundays, when practically everything was closed. I vividly remember that, in spite of it being 20 years on from the end of World War II, a number of bomb sites still remained, scarring the landscape, apparently untouched and open to the inquisitive eyes of a little boy and his Dad. Many central areas were truly deserted, our footsteps and chatter echoing around the empty streets and pavements. Later we'd amble East to the heaving Petticoat Lane Market, where it felt by comparison that every family in London had gathered to barter, haggle and trade. 

So there I am in front of a filthy looking Big Ben (it practically glistens these days), wearing what is by far the coolest jacket I've ever owned in my life. An old Green Line coach heads out of shot - possibly a 705 on the way to Victoria. A Ford Anglia passes on my side of Westminster Bridge - a car I knew well as an Uncle drove one throughout the 1960s. An unknown lady walks into shot. When I initially rediscovered the photo, my 21st century instinct told me that she was looking at her phone, but of course on closer inspection she's holding her own camera. Perhaps, buried deep in an old shoebox somewhere in this world, there's a fading image of Big Ben being photobombed by an anonymous young lad in a rather fetching brown jacket.

The snap gives me a perfect excuse to dig out Lee 'Scratch' Perry's fantastic 'Big Ben Rock', a 7" single released for Record Store Day 2019 and featuring Boz Boorer on guitar. 

Lee 'Scratch' Perry - Big Ben Rock

Monday Long Song

Social distancing wasn't an issue when this photo was taken at the end of our Walthamstow back garden in 1961. That's me looking a bit unsteady on my feet in the middle, with my hands being held aloft by my aunt and uncle, who we lost in 1978.

'Whistles blowing, people get on trains...' is the opening line of today's tune. I'm not sure how much whistles are still involved in modern day rail travel (the line should probably now read '...buzzers buzzing...' or '...digital displays flickering...'), but all being well, I did get on a train on Saturday evening and will be getting on another one to come home later today. After much soul searching and consultation with my cousin in New York, I decided to take a trip to London to visit my aunt, who's been living alone in virtual seclusion since March. In contrast to last year's grand celebrations, her 91st birthday passed quietly at the tail-end of lockdown. With travel between the UK and USA a strict no-no, my cousin could do little more on the big day than phone her Mum, send a bunch of flowers via Intaflora and ensure that she'd received the latest of her twice monthly grocery deliveries.

I haven't visited my aunt since January, which in itself is probably the longest period I've spent away from London in my entire life. Clearly I was unable to travel there during lockdown and I feel a definite sense of unease about doing so now, but the way things are shaping up, this could be the last chance for me to check in with my aunt this side of 2021. I'll be doing my best to keep a strict social distance in spite of the slightly cramped surroundings of her East London terrace, though I will have to move a little closer when I whip out my phone to connect the surprise Skype call my cousin and I have secretly made plans for. My aunt is strictly non-tech savvy, so this'll be the one and only opportunity mother and daughter (and grandchildren) will have to clap eyes on each other this year. I dare say it'll be emotional.

Here are Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch, with a dark Dylanesque epic from 2015.

Dave Rawlings Machine - The Trip

New York USA

So my trusty Google calendar reminds me that today I should be returning to work following a two week stay in the Big Apple. The original arrangements were that I would fly into the UK overnight on Sunday, landing in the early hours of Monday morning, spending the rest of the day and Tuesday snoozing and generally catching up with stuff, before heading back into the store this afternoon. The trip would've marked my first visit to New York in exactly ten years, but of course it was not to be. Here are a few snapshots that survive from previous visits in 2008/9/10 to keep me going until next time.

After my initial visits to the city in the early 1990s, I was never too bothered about hitting the tourist traps of Times Square, Fifth Avenue again, instead I'd usually head for lesser visited neighbourhoods, walking for hours fuelled only by endless coffee and bagels. On the rare occasions that my travels did take me to the mid-town area, I'd invariably strut along the sidewalk with Serge Gainsbourg's superb 'New York USA' as my internal soundtrack. The song comes from the 1964 LP 'Gainsbourg Percussions', his last full length outing for 4 years.

Serge Gainsbourg - New York USA

Photographs and Memories

'Time goes, you say? Ah no! 

Alas, Time stays, we go.' 

(Austin Dobson)

In the back yard of a small terraced house in the East End of London on April 11th 1925, a group of people assemble for a wedding photograph. The marriage in question is that of my maternal Nan and Grandfather, who sit arm in arm at the centre of the image. To Nan's left is my Grandfather's sister Maud, who, a little over 35 years later, would be known to me as Aunt Maud. At the other end of the same row, holding what looks like a small dog, is Maud's sister Marie. Towards the right end of the back row, standing alone, is Nan's sister Beatrice and in front of her, wearing a dark top and holding a baby in white is her other sister Carrie. The baby is Henry.

My Grandfather died in 1956, four years before I was born and Nan, Aunt Maud, Marie, Carrie (mother of my recently departed Aunty Emmy), Beatrice (emphysema ravaged Aunt Beat) and Henry were the only people from this photograph that I would get to know, albeit briefly in some cases. I have many photos of family get-togethers from the 1960's and into the beginning of the 1970's and gradually Beat, Carrie, Marie and Henry disappear from them. I don't remember any sadness or funerals at the time, though no doubt I was spared any such upset at my young age. It's a strange thing that, when you're very young, older people simply slip away almost without you noticing - they just don't come around anymore. You only remember that they were ever there at all many years later when you see a faintly familiar face in a photograph.

The sisters - Beatrice, Carrie and Nan, circa 1967

In 1974 Nan and Aunt Maud came to live with me and my parents, an often fraught arrangement in a small family home. By this time they were both in their late 70's, Nan was struggling to walk while Aunt Maud had been virtually blind since the 1950's. They were very loving though, and I have fond memories of much laughter in the house - they were real characters and each had their individual idiosyncrasies and mannerisms. Nan, for instance, would pepper her conversations with peculiar old proverbial phrases of dubious context, often leaving me scratching my head in confusion. One of the most baffling (and most regularly used) of these was, 'If you can't fight, wear a big hat'. Occasionally though, her arcane phrases would verge on the poetic. For example, after getting out of bed earlier than usual in the morning, she would claim that she had been up 'before the streets were aired', a lovely image which stayed with me in later life, popping into my head on many a frosty morning as I scraped the ice from my windscreen at 5.30am.

Additionally, there were also a number of bona fide homegrown 'Nanisms', her own little quirky ways of saying things, some of which affectionately remained in my family's vocabulary long after Nan died in 1976. These included pyjamas, which she always referred to as a 'pyjam suit' and, as a consequence of Nan's failure to get to grips with decimalisation in 1971, a 50p coin is, was, and shall forever be known as '...a silver ten-bob note...'

Marie and Aunt Maud, circa 1969

Aunt Maud died in 1982, still sneaking outside for the odd crafty ciggy until the end. She was a tiny lady and as I soared through the 6ft barrier in the late 1970's, she would look me up and down and declare in her soft cockney tones, 'I reckon I'm growing downwards!' It's remarkable to think back and realise that Nan, Aunt Maud, Marie, Beat and Carrie were all born in the 19th Century and that, at the time of my birth, Nan's wedding photograph was only 35 years old, although it may as well have been 135 years to my young eyes.

One last photo. Remarkably a present has survived from my Nan's wedding and it has become an unusual family heirloom. Times were hard, money was scarce and therefore an unknown guest (I wish I knew which one) offered a functional gift to the happy couple - a handmade coal shovel. As is often the way with wedding presents, it appears to have never been used and probably occupied a place on display in the family hearth, therefore remaining in the same pristine condition as when it was given, 95 years ago today.

Kevin Ayers - All This Crazy Gift of Time