Memory Lane

I have hundreds of photographs of my parents when they were young, my dad in his army uniform, my mum in her swimming costume or with groups of other relatives and friends now long since dead. My mother is still alive, 96 now and in a care home, but my father died some 15 years ago. The boxes of photos are like looking through a window to another world, hard to imagine now in the age of computers and mobile phones. They lived a much more local life, the town I grew up in was their world and their horizons were very close. My grandmother had only been to London once in her life, and to Norwich, the nearest large town, a half dozen times at most. This photo is of my parents wedding day in 1939, and only a few months later my father would be in the army facing the loss of his twenties to the second world war. He looks so young, so bright, so full of life. A moment in time, now a moment in history.

LARGE