family – Jamie Gray Writes

As a child I only had the luxury of one surviving Grand Parent…and she was quite old too. But I do remember visiting her at her home in Aston on a Sunday afternoon, which was one of the old fashioned ‘back to back’ terraced houses near to Villa Cross.

While sorting through some old photos I found a picture of my parents wedding and they were standing outside Grandma’s house…so i wrote this:-

There’s only four rooms in my Grandmothers house

Two up and two down, life is hard.

No heating or plumbing, bare floorboards frayed rugs,

And the toilet’s out back in the yard.

Now the sitting rooms posh, but no one’s allowed

To sit on the couch to sip tea

It’s covered with sheets and the fires never lit

You can look but don’t touch, leave it be.

There’s a tatty old radio plays crackly songs

It’s the only indulgence she’s got

Cause she aye got a telly nor radiogram

Sings along as she warms up the pot.

There’s a rusty old tin bath she keeps out the back,

Once a week it gets dragged through the door.

Fills it up in the parlour from the kettle she’s boiled

Quickly bathes while it leaks on the floor.

There’s a slight musty smell but it’s pristine and clean,

The front step gets a scrub every day.

With a duster that’s surgically fixed to her hand

The dirt’s quickly shifted away.

My Grandmothers poor as her home will attest

No luxuries has she to boast

But the smile on her face as she opens the door

Shows she’s happy, her family to host.

Just recently I’ve been going through a lot of the stuff I’ve collected over the years, including hundreds of old black and white photographs which belonged to my parents. Just like them I grew up in an age where digital technology was a futuristic pipe dream and we had to use the old fashioned ‘light sensitive paper’ inserted into a modern day pinhole camera to record our memories and special events.

I know it’s really hard to believe how daft things used to be…just imagine only a maximum of 35 pictures to a roll of film, and even then you couldn’t tell if they’d turned out okay until you’d carefully taken the film out of the camera, delivered it to a local chemist and waited a week before they were ready to collect and view. Hands would tremble with excitement as the colourful packet labelled ‘Your Lasting Memories’ was opened and the shiny paper squares removed, only to discover that several shots were out of focus, four images were of people without heads along with another six indistinguishable pictures of blurry blobs because a thumb had partially covered the lens. To add insult to injury there would be a sticker attached from the photo laboratory informing the disappointed recipient as to what they’d done wrong and how they could correct the problem in future. But of course it was too late by then as the holiday was over, or the party had finished, or the Bride and Groom had actually returned from their honeymoon and moved to a different part of the country.

Even the professionals could mess things up occasionally and I remember a situation where an entire party of ‘re-suited and re-booted’ wedding guests were reassembled weeks after the original event so the photographer could ‘have another go’ at getting it right as something had gone drastically wrong the first time round.

Of course the other side of this issue was the longevity of the memories in question. Images printed on paper can fade, get lost or be destroyed. Even photo albums of important events long past have probably been abandoned in the rubbish. The photo above is of my own parents wedding , and it probably hasn’t seen the light of day for decades…and there’s a fair chance it would have been returned to its hiding place until such time that someone else discovered it and discarded it due to a lack of knowledge or interest.

But something has changed now. Just by the simple act of writing this and attaching a photograph I have potentially ensured that the record of this particular event will last forever. The happy memories of the actual day for the attending have disappeared along with all of those folk in the photograph. But you can see on their faces the joy and happiness, and everyone who views this is now witness to one of life’s greatest gifts…the chance to get together as friends and family to celebrate a special occasion.

Tag: family

A little bit of Nostalgia…

Who Wants to Live Forever?