More "oldies"

I really have no idea who these people were, and as far as I am aware they had no connection with my family, because the snapshots fell out of a book picked up on one of the famous second-hand 'book barrows' on Farringdon Road, London, where I used to enjoy a stroll and a bit of browsing on my lunch breaks way back in the 1960s.

Although the faces were unknown, the domestic scenes and style of dress were quite familiar to me and immediately set my mind thinking about a proud Victorian lady - a great aunt I knew briefly in my childhood - and another, a few years younger, who 'kept house' for the farmer in whose home I was a guest for some time in the 1940s, just ten miles from London but far enough off the Luftwaffe's nightly bomb run to provide temporary refuge from the Blitz, and I can distinctly remember the big iron range like the one in the picture, which served to heat the house and provide hot water, as well as cooking food for the family.

As already mentioned, I never actually knew the people in these pictures, but feel they are part of my history because of the real memories they evoke and the stories they conjure in my mind. I have often heard the expression "A picture is worth a thousand words",  and am happy to have had the opportunity to describe these two in a quarter of that number.

So . . .  names lost, sad; imagination fired, great!

Pictures can speak louder than words . . . or whisper little confidences that invite further thought.