Recently, I’ve been fortunate to have the use of a very high-quality negative scanner. Thinking that I had time on my hands/ in a bid to make my procrastination productive, I decided to make use of this opportunity, and scan in a bunch of negatives that I’ve had in storage for 14 years. The original shots were taken during the one year that I attended college, with dad’s Olympus OM10.

A few of them bring back a lot of memories. The first one is of the freight train that I jumped on in a bid to be like Clint Eastwood, and ended up being taken on a freezing cold, bloody scary trip to a high-security steel depot just south of Liverpool (the full story, complete with amazing graphics, is here). I can still remember the fear, the long wait at Shrewsbury in the middle of the night as the train driver checked all his carriages one-by-one, armed with a ladder and torch. I was sure I was going to be caught.

The second one if of our adorable golden retriever, Toby, who died not long after this shot was taken. He was a great friend to us during my childhood. I remember the day we got him, when we lived on the farm in North Yorkshire. We played with him on the lawn in our pajamas, and just didn’t want to go to bed.

The final shot is yours truly. I think this was taken at college, by a friend. I would have been 16 at the time. I was very attached to that shirt. It was padded, had an orange lining. Given to me by Denny, my boss and friend at Wormelow Stores.

Photos are precious things.

So are words. Today, I was transferring some old documents of mum’s from her prehistoric Canon word processor (actually, my first ‘computer’, bought when I was about 18 I think) to their new Macbook. Amongst the bits of autobiography were letters to a friend written in the 1960s (on paper, typed up by mum a few years back), in which she talks about meeting Dad, but no, she doesn’t really fancy him, but he’s a nice chap!

We also found the letter from the doctor written for dad to prove that he was crazy, in order that he could get early retirement on grounds of ill health. A few other gems in there too…

Hmm. I wonder if my children will ever read this?

night night