From Alpine Pram Pushing To The Age Of Snaps

 

So here we are, a new month, and safely returned from a week in the Dolomites pushing a pram up a mountainside. Alpine pram-pushing is still a relatively new sport, and there was a possibility that we might have been chosen for the British team for the Winter Olympics, but a couple of unfortunate falls in Val Gardena meant that wasn't to be. We returned, however, with all limbs as intact as they were before we went and some precious memories of time spent with our grandchildren.

Let us start the new month by leaving all that snow behind and concentrating on a typical British seaside view from 100 years ago. By 1922, photography is getting interesting; it has come out of the studio and escaped the confines of the "professional". The Age of Snaps was just starting, and people were being captures as they really were rather than as they would like posterity to remember them.

The original photograph comes from my collection of Lost and Found Photographs and the coloured version come courtesy of Photoshop.

Filling Up

Let's travel back in time. It was the mid 1960s and I was earning a little extra money whilst still at school by working in the local petrol station in Northowram. This was before the days of self-service, so my job was to go out and fill the cars up with petrol. Occasionally I would fill up petrol cans with petrol. And then, one night, someone turned up with an old fashioned petrol lighter and demanded it filling up with petrol! It was, of course, my brother and he managed top capture the event for posterity.

Pablo Picasso, A Glass Of Beer And A Cubist Fence

 

I have suitcases full of old photographs, acquired from here, there, and endless market stalls: lost and unwanted prints of people long forgotten and places long gone. My escape route from grim reality is to delve into these collections, and befriend one of the anonymous subjects. As a pastime it is relatively harmless, less challenging than keeping ferrets, and cheaper than polygamy. And you never know what you might discover! Which brings me on to Pablo Picasso, a glass of beer and a garden fence. I have no idea where I acquired this photograph from, it certainly isn't one of those photographs that have been passed to me as designated keeper of family photographs. I accept that it probably isn't Pablo Picasso - but look at that face and compare it with some of the photographs of the great painter himself. And he's holding a paint brush. And that fence-post has a distinctively cubist look about it. And wasn't one of Picasso's finest paintings entitled "The Glass Of Beer"? You can make your own mind up, but I believe I have discovered a masterpiece.

Liberty

Forcing forward in the spirit of liberty or getting bogged down in the mud of history: today's calendar image dates back to 1982 and the Yorkshire Miners' Gala Parade in Doncaster. Around the corner was the miners' strike and changes beyond the imagination of those valiant banner-pushers.

Thrills In Halifax

The basis of today's image is a photograph I took in the mid 1960s at Halifax Charity Gala in Manor Heath Park. The thrills were provided by the noise, the crowds, the smell of candy floss and deep fried chats .... and a waltzer.

Copley Bridge

 

The bridge which spanned the River Calder at the village of Copley, near Halifax, formed a solid memory from my youth. Often I would run over its' hefty stone spans on school cross country runs, whilst at other times I would stroll the route, pausing to watch the river flow by on its' way from moors to sea. That was sixty years ago, and at some stage I must have paused to take this photograph. The village houses, built by Edward Ackroyd in 1849,  are still visible, and at that time the mill will have still been standing.

Sadly the bridge wasn't quite as solid as my memories of it - it was washed away by the 2015 Boxing Day floods. A new steel footbridge now stands in its place and new houses stand where the mill once stood.

Faded Memories Of Elland

Two of my old photographs of Elland - taken in the 1970s - and a new interpretation which forms my daily desktop calendar image.

Burnett Faces

 

A Frost Over Wortley

 

Photographs from yesterday - a frost over Wortley

So Enoch Was A Motor Driver's Mate

 

It is the day that all cultivators of family trees have been waiting for, the day of the great reveal, the day some of the questions get answered. Yes, it is the release of the 1921 census records, and genealogy addicts have been rushing online to find out exactly what their grandfathers or great-grandfathers - or for those so young that they should have better things to do - great-great grandfathers, were doing on the 19th June 1921. Getting access to the records is not cheap, so you still need two be selective in which particular gene pool you go fishing, but I could not resist getting the record for my grandfather, Enoch Burnett, which included information about my father and his brothers and sisters. There weren't too many surprises; my father was still at school and his brothers and sisters were all working in the mills around Great Horton in Bradford. My grandmother looked after the home in Arctic Parade, but my grandfather, Enoch, was the main surprise. From previous census records I had been used to him as a window cleaner and a fairground labourer, but here he is in 1921 working as a motor driver's mate. That piece of information alone was worth the cost of accessing the record.

Southgate Memories

 

Memories tend not to be photographic: time smooths the edges, blurs the focus and calms the emotions.

I must have taken the original black and white photograph of Southgate in Halifax around 1967. The new version - with a little help from Photoshop -  is from last night.