Walking on Water

12Jun08

All kids go through a phase during which they make faces at the camera. Rather than what you might consider a natural smile, you get various sorts of grimace, none of which is made more flattering by the in-flux nature of teeth.
Ironically, by the time the teeth are sorted, the hormones have kicked in, and [...]

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Tags: barbatre, beach, France, noirmoutier, sea, vendee

Hiatus

21May08

There is still a good half term to go in the school year, and the summer will be a very short one (only five and a half weeks, which is a right swizz). The last half term is eight weeks plus, which is two weeks longer than you can really stand. I’ve lost a lot [...]

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Tags: beach, beach holidays, british summer, Nostalgia

Available Light

14May08

My disenchantment with Flickr runs on many levels. Part of it is to do with that trap in which you feel like you’re obliged to make comments on people’s photos. This makes me sound terribly mean-spirited, but it’s like this. I’m not a small-talk person. I don’t like saying “Good morning” to people I see [...]

Filed under: Candid, Colour, available light, low-light, no flash, photography   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Flickr

Summer Dresses

11May08

My youngest daughter (left, in the Boden spotty dress above) loves girly dresses with extra layers for twirling and dancing. Nothing I’ve encouraged, I assure you.
She did dance lessons for a while, but we stopped when we witnessed her choreographing her own moves in a dance performance, when she was supposed to be in synch [...]

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Tags: dancing, dresses, summer

You’ll break your neck

09May08

Yesterday’s news story about the huge compensation claim against a couple who hired a bouncy castle for a child’s birthday party is enough to give anyone pause. On Google Earth you can see that trampolines are quite a common garden toy these days. We’ve had one for a couple of years and thankfully there haven’t [...]

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Tags: compensation, lawsuits, risks, trampoline

Shiny

08May08

We ate lunch in an interesting square with a covered market, some of which dated from the Roman occupation, and then we walked up the hill. Somewhere between eating some of my daughter’s frites and taking this photo, I must have touched the lens of the camera. All the pictures taken that afternoon (where light [...]

Filed under: Candid, Colour, Landscape, available light, low-light, no flash, photography   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Charente, church, France

Beside the seaside

07May08

In 1963, about half of all seaside holiday makers would have arrived at their destination by train. Less than ten years later, it was just 30%, partly (no doubt) because of the self-fulfilling prophecy of branch line closures brought about by the then-Labour government’s modernisation philosophy.
I was around 6 months old when my family went [...]

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Tags: beach holidays, holidays, Nostalgia, seaside, vacations

Sunday Driver, Yeah

06May08

The remarkable thing, I think, is that we had a car at all in those days. With six kids, six school uniforms, six pairs of shoes every few months, and only one income, life was hard. We didn’t own our house, it was rented off the printing works where my dad worked. Somehow there was [...]

Filed under: Black and White, Candid, old photos, photography, scans   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: 60s, autobiography, Family, Nostalgia