Bus Station Dynasties

 

History is sometimes measured in dynasties - the Tudors or Stuarts, the Tangs or the Yans - but for most folk a more prosaic way of marking the passage of time is called for. Having grown up in Halifax and having lived in these parts for large periods of my life, for me it’s bus stations. My youth was framed by the concrete aisles of Crossfields Bus Station: it’s there I dawdled with school bag over my shoulder, it was there I ran to catch the last bus in my late teenage years. Then there was the first version of Wade Street which somehow never felt complete, always seemed like an excuse for a bus station rather than the real thing. Today marks the official opening of the new Wade Street bus station - our solar panelled, cycle-parked, bee-friendly bus station. If you look at it from the right angle, Beacon Hill becomes its roof and that’s what a Halifax Bus Station should be like. So welcome to this new dynasty, may its buses run safely for many a year to come.

Not Seeing The Moores For The Trees

This family photograph from the 1930s perfectly captures a marriage of style and elegance. It also captures a marriage between two people, but I am a little uncertain as to who they are. The one person I can identify is the man seated second from the left, the man with a hairstyle of sculptured grandeur, and he is my Uncle Harry (Harry Moore 1903-1982). He did have a brother, Eddy, who married Minnie Noble in Bradford in August 1933, so there is a reasonable chance that is who the bride and groom are. In the hope of finding more information about this relatively remote branch of the family tree I turned to an on-line genealogy site. I quickly found the elusive Eddy Moore and his bride and for further information I was directed to a public family tree of the Moore family. To my surprise this identified generations of potential relatives I never knew I had: the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of my Uncle Harry and his wife, Annie.

This, however, was where the potential problems started. Aunty Annie and Uncle Harry never had any children, especially not in London when they were just teenagers and long before they had met. In constructing this elaborate family tree - which contained a host of photographs of real members of my family - a simple mix-up with a fairly common set of names had falsely grafted our two families together. What I should really do is to write to the person concerned and point out the error of their ways. I won't, however. Let them share our branch of the family - there are enough eccentric characters in there to go around. And let Aunty Annie and Uncle Harry have their descendants erect trees in their memory. They deserve it.

Sandstone Palaces

 

Sometimes the lines are better blurred. Usually the signs are better blurred. We can forget the message, be it about fake tans or coffee cups, and concentrate on this stone monument to the gods of commerce, a sandstone palace fit for a Coffee King.

After The Rain

 

I recently acquired a lovely old 1904 album of photographs taken in and around the Scottish village of Brig o' Turk. Despite the age of the photos, you are not drawn into the usual "then and now" comparisons: as far as I can tell, little has changed. It is the captions that provide the time stamp - crafted in a font no digital download ever provided.

Daffodil On The Water

When I was young, back in the early 1950s, our family’s annual seaside holiday would alternate between Bridlington on the east coast and New Brighton on the west. On those years we headed west, our journey would involve a train to Liverpool and then a ferry across the Mersey to our seaside destination. Sorting through some old family papers I found this postcard of one of the Mersey ferries from that era, a postcard I probably bought on one of those journeys.

The ferry being “on the water”, it becomes a suitable contribution to this month’s Sepia Saturday theme – “On The Water”. Other Sepia Saturday posts can be found by following the link on the Sepia Saturday blog.

SEPIA SATURDAY

EAST : Hunmanby - Filey - Hornsea

 

Special Delivery

 

For anyone devoted to wandering down the side streets of inconsequence, old picture postcards are an ideal mode of transport. You can spend many a happy hour trying to work out where the old photographs were taken from – where, for example, in Elland was this view taken from 110 years ago – and you can drop in on a century-old WhatsApp conversation. And, if you want even more, you can marvel at a time when postcards appear to have been delivered the day before they were written!

The Stealthy Hebble

The Hebble Brook stealths its way through Halifax, hidden where possible, breaking to the surface only occasionally to spit-wash the shadows of industry gone by.

Soul Ownership

I’ve never been convinced by the accusation that when you take someone’s photograph, you are stealing their soul; just because you possess a photo of someone doesn’t mean you can lay claim to their soul. Possessing the negative is a different thing entirely. Thanks to a recent purchase of an original 1940s negative on eBay, I can now announce that I possess the souls of not only President Roosevelt, but the actress Katherine Hepburn as well!