When I was younger I didn’t take a great deal of notice of my families mixed histories, but as I have gotten older the lives of family members who are now long gone seem to have taken on more significance. My dad was a war baby born in the Headland in Hatlepool and my grandma worked on the railways doing heavy manual work, as did many other women at that time, filling in for the men who were away at war. We were not a wealthy family, so the photos I have of them are unfortunately few and far between.
I remember each year that various family members would visit and a huge projector screen would be set up in the living room and we would have a slide show of family photos. At around the time I was eight or nine years old, my dad bought a Polaroid camera and we were all so amazed at seeing instant photos! The downside of this was that these instant images faded so quickly, the quality of these black and white photos was not so good; so I thought that I would have to rely on my memories, just as my family had before me, until recently when my dad converted many of his old projector slides into digital images, which he sent to me on disk: at the risk of being self-indulgent, here are a few of my childhood favourites!
Sonia Kilvington 