The Night Before The Wedding

The photograph above is a definite out-take. Yet something about it kept me from disposing of it years ago. There's an air of jollity about it and Daddy looks so dignified. It must have been a special occasion, a birthday or an anniversary. Mum's in there too but a rascally child seems to have got right in front of her. I wonder who took the picture. Maybe they were laughing so much they just couldn't keep the camera steady. 

We'll be having another family get-together tomorrow as that rascally child is getting married. I hope she and her new husband get themselves a better photographer than whoever it was who took that one.

A Box Of Photographs

I'm all excited over my new scanner and dug out a box of photographs I might not have looked at in over ten years. Nellybert must have been quite the party animal back in the nineties and it was very strange to see images of myself sitting on my own sofa, a glass in one hand, a smoke in another and chatting away to some handsome young man whose name I don't recall, or what he was even doing in my house.

But I'm not showing any of those! Far too embarrassing to be seen smoking!

Instead here is one of Bert sitting on his very own sofa with a pretty young lady. He still has that pruning book and I still have the quilt and Katy still has the bear. The young lady is now in her twenties and has a very new baby of her own.

My own blonde self sunning myself in 1996. I still have the fat ass. Sadly the vintage chair fell apart a long time ago. Maybe it was the fat ass wot dunnit.

Ballymena Sportsbowl more than twenty years ago. I was a Support Worker back then and we'd take groups of people out for the evening. Great fun. The Sportsbowl was demolished a few weeks ago and I no longer have that shirt. It was vintage and I picked up in a charity shop, dyed and decorated it with fabric paint. Sometimes I wish I still dressed like that.

Mum in 1994. The baby is her great-niece or nephew. Don't know which one.

One of the very best things about moving back to the country was having the space to make a wild garden. I thought it would be fun to have Zoe peeking out of a jungle of flowers. She would have been in her late teens then. The tree is (unbelievably, knowing Clint) still standing but the garden is all farm buildings and concrete. It's very tidy.

Oh, all right then! Here's one where I'm smoking. It's a party at someone else's house and I'm sitting with my lovely sister. So weird to see it now.

Iffiest Joy

Happy Birthday Joe!

For The Love Of Chickens

Anyone who follows my Flickr photostream will have realised that Nelly's got a brand new printer/photocopier/scanner to play with. Well - I say new but actually it was given to me by Les, who occasionally gets free range eggs from us and a wee bit of ground to grow things on and then, in return, we get blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes (wine) and chillies (yummy) which is much better than going to the shops and buying things.

Last night, while going through a packet of Pearlie's photographs I noticed a theme. Bert's female relatives have always been very keen on keeping chickens. The first photograph shows his Great Aunt Maggie feeding her little flock. I like the look of Maggie. She is, in Ulster parlance, a tidy wee woman and she has a very kind, sweet face. I also like that she is doling out the grain very generously indeed.

And this is Bert's Aunt Annie, who, when she was a girl and lived on this very farm. Those chooks are living where pigs hang out these days and I note than chickens keep a far tidier house and yard than Rusty and Lily do.

This is a shot of Pearlie and her dog taken a few years ago. That shed to her left is gone now. You can just make out to the right of the flock little Bernie the black bantie who lived for many years, until the fox finally grabbed her as she was minding her one and only chick. Bernie was the only one left when we came to live here and when I suggested getting some laying hens, Pearlie protested, "What need d'ye have of a lot of oul hens?" which I thought was rather unreasonable. We ignored her and got them anyway. Free range eggs are better by far.

And now, thanks to Les, I am able to scan these old photographs and give the originals to the grandchildren and children of their original subjects. Pearlie thinks that is a good idea too.

Biking It

Matty and I went out for a bike ride probably a quarter of a century ago. I can't recall very much about it. I only know that I was with her for that is my blue ladies racer lying in the hedge. It's not that good a photograph - I should have got all of Matty's bike in there and avoided those pylons. And yet - it is a good picture. Look at her happy, happy face.

It is one of those pictures taken in the olden days that were not considered good enough for a frame or an album, just one of those photographs thrown in a box and forgotten about. Then decades pass and everything changes and then they become precious. That bike ride I can barely remember but there she is. We must have enjoyed ourselves for just look at her happy, happy face.

Tales From the Negative Scanner

Hannah was just a little bit disappointed in her blind date. He dressed well but his looks were....unusual.

Zoe was over the moon to have won the jazziest jumper competition.


The evenings dragged in without the internet and only four channels on the telly.


We were so poor then that we dressed like hobos and the only food we had were Jokers.