LOL With Auntie Annie

STANDING AROUND 12

For once I know who is standing and where she is standing, and, I suspect, I can make a fair guess as to the "when". It is Annie Moore - my Auntie Annie - and the photograph was taken in the back garden of her house in Carbottom Road, Bradford. I think they moved there in the mid to late 1930s and I suspect that the photograph was taken during that period.

Auntie Annie was a consummate storyteller - a skill that is so often under-estimated. She knew exactly how to "construct" a story - how much detail was needed, how to promote expectation, when to pause, when to let a gesture carry the story forward. One of her classic stories took place in that back garden, where the dustbin was kept. For some reason she had acquired half a bag of cement which she didn't want and which she threw away in the dustbin. Later it had rained heavily and the water mixed with the cement which mixed with whatever else was in there, resulting in a dustbin full of set concrete. Annie would tell the story of how she hid behind the lace curtain on the day the dustbins where due for emptying and watched successive dustmen attempt to heave the bin onto their backs to take it to the bin wagon parked in the street. Each groan and gesture would appear in that story building up to the point where four hefty bin-men manhandled the bin down the garden path. 

The acronym LOL (Lough Out Loud) had not been invented back in those days. It should have been, it perfectly describes Annie and her stories.