Wednesday 14 June 2017

Fun With Old Photos

While searching through a large shoe box full of old photos, looking for something planned for a future post I found lots that I'd love to share. So I will just because I can!
What's my mum trying to show me on my new blackboard in this carefully posed photo? Xmas 1957 or 58 it says on the back written in much later. Probably 58 I think

On the right - this was a regular thing every spring, our next door neighbour Mrs A would take us for a walk "up the fields to the woods" where we probably wiped out all the primroses, cowslips and oxslips, bringing them home by the basket-full. Mrs A is seated on a tree-stump, with her grand-daughter Penny on her knee. I'm on the right - school gaberdine coat and welly boots! (What WERE gaberdines?) and on the right is Margaret the grand-daughter of the people who lived the other side of Mrs A.  There were very few children in our street so visiting grand-children were roped in whenever possible to keep us company. This would have been taken in about 1962 or 3.

Honeymoon accommodation September 1979! . A tent and camping equipment borrowed from the Scout group where we were both leaders, on a slightly tatty campsite just inland from Sandown on the Isle of Wight. I was thin then!

 The campsite has since been modernised and is now owned by The Camping and Caravanning Club.


And Finally.............Where are they now?



The above photo is of our School reunion held at the school in October 1988. All of us here began at Stowmarket Grammar School in September 1966 and left in 1971 or 1973. Three of us (Front row second left P., third left me and 4th left G)., got together to organise this. Of course this was before social media and the only way to find people was if they or their parents were still in the area and saw the newspaper article or we found their parents in the phone book.

We managed to trace about two-thirds of the 80ish who started in 1966. Lots were overseas and unable to come, one or two "Never wanted to cross the thresh-hold of that place ever again!" and several we couldn't find but those who did come had a good if somewhat surreal evening.  The headmaster - Dr Robert Montgomery and some of the other teachers from that time are seated in the second row. "Monty" as he was obviously called was still headmaster at the time of this photo in 1988 and helped us contact some of the staff.

I could name many of those in the photo but  probably not really correct to do that (although I must mention Charles the guy with the fantastic moustache - he was in the RAF - obviously! and Roderick - known as Roux because of the ginger hair who was at the same primary school as me - last heard of living and working in Sweden). I later became distantly connected through marriage to the lady sitting front right as she is Col's sister's husband's cousin! (Wonder if I have all the apostrophes in the right places? I never could get the hang of them in the first year at Grammar school!)

Now of course everyone seems to keep in touch with everyone else long after school but back in the 70's once you left and went separate ways you were unlikely to ever meet again.Especially if you were at a Grammar school which took children who passed their 11 Plus test from a very wide area.

 Our school reunion was the first ever at the school but once the photo above appeared in the local paper I believe several more from other school years were held.

 I had a passing fancy (but was busy with a smallholding at the time) to organise another re-union in 2006 - 40 years after starting at the school as our School song was verses 1 and 4 of  "40 Years on". Much more famously known as THE HARROW SCHOOL SONG. Someone obviously had illusions of grandeur when they made this the school song of the much less well known Stowmarket Grammar School!

Back in a trice
Sue


25 comments:

  1. Awwww weren't you the cutest little girl! Great photos and a trip down memory lane xx

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  2. We are clearly the same age. I've got one with Mum and my hair in a bow. And strange orangey brown pictures from my honeymoon in 79. And dire 1980s fashions group school pictures. Why did anyone think white tights were flattering? Strange how somebody else's pictures can bring back memories of my own youth. Thanks x

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    1. I wonder why in the 70's the photos all look that weird colour. It must have been the paper used at the time for printing - back in the day when you took a roll of film to Boots and waited for the photos to come back

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  3. So true about the flowers. Love the title, reminds me of Fun with Flags from the Big Bang Theory.

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  4. Happy memories. I loved the flower-picking one - I'm sure they all grew well despite the pickings. I am smiling at your camping honeymoon - these days people will blow money they haven't got on expensive weddings and honeymoons in exotic places, but really, all you need is each other - oh, and a tent helps!!

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  5. Lovely photos and you've given me an idea as I've just sorted out some very old ones too. Thanks you!
    J x

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  6. I love real photos,I have boxes in the wardrobe that I've sorted through many
    times. Although not many as teenagers, probably too busy doing our own thing.

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  7. I'm slightly older than you and married in 1969, so not long till our Golden Wedding. We had our honeymoon in Torquay, where we had a nice apartment that cost 3 1/2 guineas for the week. Honeymoons these days are more extravagant.

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  8. Gabardines seem to have formed a major part of my youth. I had two. One navy, one green. They did their job! I rather like them.

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  9. I'm two years younger than you Sue, and in 1979 I hadn't even met my DH!
    I was slim, naturally blonde and enjoying spending my wages on myself!
    I occasionally wonder how much I'd have in the bank now if I hadn't spent a fortune on hand made Italian shoes and designer clothes during the late seventies and early eighties! Oh what the hell, I enjoyed spending it!
    There has never been a reunion of my year at Grammar School, but I wouldn't have attended anyway, I loved the school and most of the teaching staff, but I wasn't fussed about most of the other girls. There was a lot of bitching went on, and I can't be bothered with that sort of thing!

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  10. Sorry, forgot to say, you look very like your mum, and you haven't changed since 1988, it's very easy to spot you in the reunion photograph!

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    1. Thank you for saying I've not changed! several pounds heavier and the hair is much whiter otherwise I'm still 30 something!

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  11. I came to say how much you're like your Mum Sue - and find I'm not the only one who thinks so!
    Lovely to find old photos! My middle daughter and her husband had their Silver Wedding yesterday, and I pulled out our copy of their wedding album, and posted a picture of the bridesmaids on Facebook. Took me ages, as I had to peruse every picture! - especially the big group one with all the guests (many of whom are not with us any more).
    Another of my daughters had their honeymoon in a tent, and yet another had theirs in various B&Bs, hitch hiking between them! (That husband has now been an MP for 16 years, but, as you can guess, a very down to earth one!

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    1. I hope your son in law J was elected back in last week!

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    2. Yes, thank you Sue - he got more than 50% of the vote.
      (We'd been really worried as it wasn't looking good.)

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  14. Your chalkboard photo reminded me of the test card! That could totally become a greetings card, with some suitably pithy comment below 😁 I put my teacher's hat on 🎓 to tell you: yes, all your posessive apostrophes are correct ✔

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    1. Thank heavens for that! We only did proper English grammar in our first year or maybe two terms at high school. Nothing in primary school at all. Our teacher was a strange woman called Mrs Knott, she had a wart on her face which was off putting and I hadn't a clue about grammar being from Suffolk where we have sentences back to front - always (just like that!)

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  15. I love old photos even other peoples! I especially like the camping one - the colours of the photo shout out the Seventies and the scene evokes special memories for me of wonderful family holidays with mum and dad in our touring caravan.

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  16. I love that top photo of you with your Mother. You look like a very well cared for and loved child.

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  17. You did so well to get so many at your reunion having no social media to help. When we did our 20 year meet up we had Friends Reunited to help, then the last one someone else did they had FB and things were easier still. My school is going to be demolished soon and we went back this week for one last look round. Our headmaster was there, he's 86 now and looking very sprightly.
    Lisa x

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  18. Hi, Sue.
    Great to see the photo of ex Stowmarket Grammar School pupils taken in 1988. I believe I was in your year. Am I right in thinking that you were then Susan Fellingham?
    Best wishes,
    Kevin Morley.

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  19. PS You are right about Mrs Knott (Nellie Knott) being a strange woman! Kevin.

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