Seems Like a Long Time

March 25th - the date was naggingly familiar, but for a while I couldn't put my finger on exactly why. And then I remembered. It was on that very day, 21 years earlier, that I closed the doors on my little record shop for the last time. 21 years...blimey. The numbers pile up. By the time I took on my own business, I'd already been working in record shops for 7 years. Then I spent 14 years behind the counter at my place. Now it's been 21 years since it all ended. Sometimes it feels like only yesterday - sometimes it seems like a very long time ago indeed.

I recently came across the photo at the top of this post in the middle of a negative strip. It looks very much like 1989 to me. I've no idea why I took it, unless it was to document my recently purchased CD racking, which cost me an arm and a leg, but, as I tried to explain to my long-suffering bank manager at the time, CDs are the future y'know! 

Name those sleeves.

Rod Stewart - Seems Like a Long Time

Left-off Wearing Apparel and Sacks of All Kinds

Vintage photographs, old newspapers, forgotten letters, ancient advertisements, antique documents and random aged scraps of paper. Ephemera, I love it. A glimpse into a world long-gone. How many hands has this ostensibly worthless item passed through before it fell into my possession? How did it survive this long? What stories could it and it's previous owners tell?

Take this old flyer for instance, though the term flyer wouldn't have been recognised at the time of it's distribution, as it probably dates from around the First World War, if not earlier. Mr Evans is clearly in the market for a broad range of products, from rabbit skins to mangles, and to prove it, he's written a poem. It's like a primitive jingle!

 

And here's a pair of photographs, plucked at random from a growing collection. Four dapper young men, in a splendid array of hats, pose for the camera. Nothing interesting here you might think. Brothers? Work colleagues? Drinking buddies? Take a look at the next shot of the same four men.

I wasn't prepared for that either! The costumes are so ridiculous and the faces so straight, I assume that these young men must be stage performers, perhaps in the Music Hall. Wouldn't it be great to know more though? Every picture tells a story, but I wish I could hear theirs.