My First Photograph

This is the first photograph that I took. It was of my father and younger brother (the late CJ).  I was 8 years old.  My father was a keen photographer and a member of the (Royal?) Liverpool Photographic Society which 75 years ago used to meet in the Bluecoat Chambers in Liverpool City Centre.  The Society  doesn't appear to exist now although there are other photographic societies in the area.

What really struck me is the fact that my father was wearing a suit and tie despite the fact that we were on holiday and staying at the holiday cottage my parents had. Unfortunately I'm not sure which one it was. My parents had a cottage in or near Mostyn on the Welsh coast of the estuary of the River Dee at one time but also had one on the Wirral coast somewhere around Heswall for a while. I think that the latter one was green (and called The Green Hut) so this is probably the former. 

The Elephant in The Room

A number of people in Blogland and also in my personal life have recently been commenting on the fact that we are all getting older and some of us are getting to the stage when there is one helluva lot more behind us than we can look forward to.

Although few of us mention it, many of my friends deep down wonder not so much how long we are going to live but how much longer we are going to function effectively physically, and in many ways far more importantly, mentally. As more and more people I know succumb to dementia of one type or another it is the condition that we all dread but all pretend is something that happens to other people. It is the untalked about elephant in the room.

My Dad was born in 1907 on 11 December so this would be his 116th birthday (and if I have the maths wrong I'm sure someone will tell me). He died at the age of 94.

I've blogged about him on a few occasions because he was a wonderful father and a lovely person.

Today's post is a little story from the last week or so of his life when he had been admitted to a nursing home as an emergency patient with chronic heart failure which meant that he was unable even to raise his hand to his mouth to give himself a drink.

On being told of his admission I drove down from the Hebrides to Liverpool and went straight to the nursing home.

Just after I arrived a Social Worker also arrived and was shown into the room. She introduced herself and said that she had come to assess my father for his suitability for the facility. 

She then started  with the usual questions "Do you know where you are and what time it is?" and so on. At that point I interjected and pointed out that this was a bizarre line of questioning for someone who was virtually blind, had no access to a clock, a radio or anything else and could not read a newspaper even if he had one and that I, who did but who had just driven from the Hebrides couldn't tell her the date, time or even what day it was.  

After she and I had exchanged a few more sentences Dad interjected:

"For heaven's sake you two!" "The date is...the day is... We had lunch about an hour ago. They presumably serve it around 1230. So it's probably about 1.30. The date is X (I never did know how on earth he knew that), and you are probably going to ask me who is on the throne and who the Prime Minister is etc etc." He then went on to answer the questions he had presumed would be asked. 

At the end of all that the Social Worker turned to me and said "Well that is you and I truly put in our place", put down her papers and started have a proper conversation with Dad and I. 

I keep clinging to the hope that as both my parents at the age of 94 and 93 had all their mental faculties there may be hope for me now that I've entered my eightieth year. 

(OK How many of you - apart from Bob if he read this - checked my maths?)

Smoking

In October my brother, CJ, and I went to the 1950s Museum in Denbigh, North Wales. It is a fascinating place and, for those of a certain age, it evokes many memories and, for those who are younger, it doubtless causes differing degrees of disbelief. I hope to write a few posts on the museum but this one is specifically on smoking and the, now, unbelievably different attitude to smoking's acceptability in every aspect of life. Who, for example, could ever believe that this advert might actually produce positive results:

I'm sure some of these pictures will bring back memories for some of my older UK readers:

Capstan Full Strength, Senior Service and Players were preferred by men and were rarely (if ever) sullied by a filter tip (I'm pretty confident in saying).

Balkan Sobranie were favoured by people who wished to make a statement (I'm not quite sure which statement) and people who just loved the 'different' taste. My Grandmother smoked Woodbine from pre-teen years (illicitly) until she died at the age of 93. My special treat for her on occasion was to bring in a box of Sobranie.

I had completely forgotten about Park Drive but that was the cigarette that my mother smoked until she gave up - possibly in her 40s. However until she died (again at the age of 93 like her Mother) she always craved a cigarette after dinner.

Pipe tobacco. My Dad smoked Condor (or occasionally St Bruno) all his life (he died at 94). My Uncle smoked the pipe tobacco Cut Golden Bar or Gold Block until he gave up some time before he died (as his Mother and Sister had done at 93).

I gave up cigarettes in May 1967 just having bought a box of 50 Piccadilly Tipped and smoked 3 of them. I threw them across the office declaring I would never smoke another cigarette as long as I lived. The office junior scrabbled round picking them all up and made off with them after asking if he could have them before I changed my mind. I have never smoked a cigarette since.

RIP Dad

Morris Thompson Edwards

Thankful Thursday: Fifteen Years

Scriptor's and my father, Morris Edwards, died 15 years ago today.

In the past I have posted photos of Dad. Today I might post a photo but I thought that I would relay some of my memories of him.  

I can only recall two occasions when Dad got annoyed with me (there were probably lots but if there were he never showed it). One still strikes me as bizarre. I ate anything that was put before me as a child. Until one day at dinner celery appeared.  I remember nothing about how or why celery appeared (I can't imagine that it was a usual food 65 years ago) on the dinner table but it did. I wouldn't eat it.  Dad asked me to leave the table. The fact that it was so unusual can be demonstrated by the fact that I can still recall it.

Another memory is of climbing Moel Fammau as a youngster with Dad. I must have been very young because my brother wasn't with us.  We were descending from the summit when a squall with very strong wind hit us and I was blown off my feet and at danger of being blown down the hillside. Dad did a rugby tackle lunge to catch me and keep me safe. It was a long, wet return home!

Dad was also a very calm person. During the war he was in a reserved occupation so couldn't join the forces. I recall someone saying to him "Ah but you weren't in the war were you?". To which Dad's response was "Being a fireman on the Liverpool Docks with bombs falling all round you wasn't exactly a bundle of laughs." And that was that.

Dad probably never recalled any of those incidents once they had happened. They've stayed with me for well over half a century.

Mum and Dad leaving Childwall Church on their wedding day.

Thankful Thursday

I've been taking photos since before ever so long ago.  Obviously in The Olden Days I took them in black and white (for you youngsters that's 'without colours').  Sometimes I used B&W even after colour had become my norm.  Some people like Andrea use no colour most of all the time.  Strange but true.  She has a Bronica ("bow, bow ye lower middle classes...").  I never did but this one still turned out to be square so I obviously had some camera or other which took square photos.  We may never know which one it was.  This was my Mum holding a couple of sparklers.  I've always been rather secretly pleased with it.  Today I am coming out and turning secret into no longer secret.

Today I am thankful for Dad who encouraged me to take photographs from a very early age and who helped me enormously in every way.

Thankful Thursday: Dad

I was laying in bed this morning in that sort of state where one is not exactly awake and not exactly asleep: a state I don't experience that often because I am usually fast asleep or wide awake.

I was conscious of the fact that it was Thursday and was trying to decide on a Thankful Thursday topic.  In fact so many things were running through my mind that trying to settle on one was hard.  It's not just a question of being thankful either.  It's also a question of making it interesting and meaningful.  The exercise does, however, make me very conscious of being thankful for so many things and that is, after all, its true purpose.

So often, even when I have a topic in mind, there is a further problem.  I feel a bit like Elizabeth Taylor's seventh husband must have felt on their wedding night:  I know what's expected but I'm not sure how to make it interesting.

Ten years ago today CJ's and my Dad died.  He would have been 104 this year.

He was a wonderful father. 

So today I'm thankful for the fact that for well over half a century we had such a wonderful Dad.

Morris Edwards with Andrew in 1974

Morris Thompson Edwards

Morris Thompson Edwards - CJ's and my Dad - died on this day in 2001.  He would have been 102 this year.  Last year on this day CJ posted a number of photos from Dad's youth. I thought I would post some today from a little later in his life.  The first one is of  Dad with me taken when I was, at a guess, three or four (I'm not too good with ages).  The rest were taken by me in the Sixties. Dad was rarely without his pipe (or  his camera).  The third photo includes CJ. 

 

 

 

The Voovo

OK so this has absolutely nothing to do with Eagleton. In fact the things upon which I blog are getting less and less likely to be about Eagleton.

I have made a start on scanning in old pictures and slides. Oddly I started with very old black and white photos and then jumped to slides of the family holiday in Scotland in 1962. Now I have leapfrogged to 1970 and am concentrating on the albums from that era before I start on the thousands of 'loose' photos and slides. It is enjoyable and a wonderful trip down memory lane. Sometimes I feel very happy. Sometimes, because so many photos in the period I'm doing at the moment are of Andrew, there is a huge tinge of sadness as well.

This morning whilst looking for a photo for "From my Collection" in the sidebar to this Blog I came across the first car that Carol and I chose together. It was called "The Voovo". It was, in fact, a Volvo 221 but, for some reason the badge on the bonnet said "Voovo". No-one at the garage had noticed but we declined to have the badge changed and for us it was always The Voovo. I think that I probably have fonder memories of that car than any other. We travelled 70,000 miles in it and sold it with 116,000 miles on the clock and Pirelli Cinturato tyres on the wheels. How can I remember that?

Volvo produced 73196 221 Estates between 1962 and 1969.

In 1956 Volvo launched one of its most successful model ranges, the "Amazon" series. Starting with the 121 and 122 models the Amazon range soon established itself as a comfortable, reliable and well built car which also introduced new levels of safety equipment, still very much a novelty in the mid-50's! The range continued to expand from 1956 with numerous models including 121, 122, 122S, 122 (updated and designated B18), 131, 132S, 133, 221/222 and finally a 123GT "sports" version.

The Voovo with Dad on Newlands Pass in the Lake District in 1972.