I Salute you Christopher.

As  Helen
mentions in the 'comments' section below , the arrangement in the picture is unusual.It is the house ,not the people who are given prominance. The group are almost incidental......
I keep searching the many widows to check if i see anybody is peeking at  us  outside...!
So,something of a mystery is this photograph.
 I found it among my Aunt Brenda's collection after she died.gallery/n-qhJbM/
Now,it was among many family photos taken in Canada & the USA at the turn of the century.
I know that the young Brenda travelled there with my grandfather & his first wife ( she died & he remarried my grandmother about ten years later).
Now her other photos of North America are clearly labelled.But she also had two different photos of this house ( basically .one with this family group & one without).These  were not labelled  in any way.......
The people in it  dont look like my grandfather & Brenda.Tho,so far away,I could be wrong about that......
A bit of a mystery.I cant say this looks like Canada or New York State...tho ,who knows?

this is a sepia saturday

 
The Mighty Harry Leslie Smith talks with the aide of sepia  photography in the above video. 
It's the UK Labour Party's Annual Conference next week.
The following week sees my son Christopher's  birthday.

http://www.robertmontgomery.org/

after the goldrush

"To mark our 500th call you are invited to return to your favourite Sepia Saturday contribution and re-share it with the world". 

This is a sepia saturday

post and below is a re-post of mine from 14th January 2010.

Photo from Aunt Brenda's album.

More uploads from my family's history here.............more info shortly.........Yesterday,.I met My Brother Zyg with Cathy & my Sister-in-Law Jean at The Bear in Todmorden.We had Lunch &; he gave me several Newspaper cuttings relating to Our Family's presence in North America. (not read them yet!) +137 more photos to share including the one above..........It's kind of tricky sharing & scanning these photos as they are both small & stuck in a photo album.I dont want to damage anything so i will take my time to copy them safely........

Here are the first batch I've uploaded.Something I never knew, My Aunty Brenda was born in Canada. My Grandfather moved there in the early 1900's "looking for gold" :"goldpanning" Whatever........I will give you more detail when i understand it more myself.
I have a postcard from Canada.Later my Grandfather must have moved South, hence these photo from Saranac Lake in upstate New York. .

I have been sharing these photos on facebook with Historic Saranac Lake
Turns Out It's Not Connected with Robert Louis Stevenson.But Interesting,None The Less (just mere coincidence a Family member returned?)......
.Sorry I have been AWOL from blogging .will visit you soon!Check Out Alan's Sepia Saturday for other romps !

Photo from Aunt Brenda's album.

the earth sings when he touches it [Shakespeare]

Horses are one of the theme options for this week's Sepia Saturday.

I may have shown these photos before?Im not sure but its always worth repeating.Innit.

Above&below r some of  my Aunt Brenda's photos from The Saranac Winter Carnival. 

Brenda was born in Canada.& ,at some point,her & the family moved to Upstate New York where these was taken

. here are a few more of her wonderful photos. 

here a couple of previous posts about it all....... 

This is a Sepia Saturday post.Hurray!

sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment

Me and Cathy with friends.

2nd left:My Aunty Brenda.

This week's sepia saturday

is around sepia ladies 'working out' in The Olden Days.

A fairly easy one for me this week.My Aunty Brenda travelled from

Scotland to Essex in the early 1900's.

It was a Ladies College.She  was training in Podiatry.

And this is how she did it.......

 it looks like she had her some fun.
This  must have been a quite liberating experience for a late-Victorian lass.......

From someone at the start of a career...to someone at it's end.
I retired on Wednesday...... I went out into Hebden Bridge at 4pm this afternoon for a few nice drinks with some of the lassies from work.
On Friday 1st September (kick off 7.30pm) I will be having drinks in The White Lion in Hebden Bridge . All Welcome

no place to hyde

.So.I am related to the author Robert Louis Stevenson.

I have described some details about this here before.Here is a transcript of something I first posted on this blog  in July 2006[view here]

This week's sepia saturday concerns 'bookish' topics.......

So.Basically.My maternal grandfather was married 3 times. He had a child with each of his wives. (My mum's mum had died in childbirth). I am not related by blood to RLS,but my Aunty Brenda's mum was on that ol'literary  bloodline.. stuff was complicated in The Olden Days .......

I'm a shit genealogist (blushes) I dont know who the old couple are (.tho the bloke isn't my grandfather.I know that much!)But this is a nice ,rare,photo of the 3 half-siblings ,all together.My Mum's  sat on the couples knee.My Uncle Gordon sat on his half-sister Brenda's knee......I guess this was taken in Scotland.Probably Perth or Fife.

Several events coming up in the next couple of weeks that will be featured here later....

• Next Wednesday (16th) I attend an event at Lister Lane Cemetry ,Halifax  .It's the 175th Anniversary of The 1842   General Strike.4 Chartists are buried there.I dont know much about either the riot or deaths ( similar to Peterloo?) although the Mayor & local Labour MP will be in attendance."Brass Bands and refeshments"they say..... ! Let us eat cake While we mark  the   "Plug Riot"
• Next Sunday (20th) at Albert Square  Manchester me & Cathy go to see (among others) actor Christopher Ecclestone (a former Doctor Who) read out the Peterloo Massacre "NAMES"

• A week on Thursday (24th) in Hebden Bridge Pubs  (k.o. 4pm) I will be having a few cheeky drinks to mark my retirement.

Below,a slideshow my    photographs  from the 2015 Peterloo Memorial.

  Read About The Peterloo Massacre here
 
A nice bonus for me was finding thislocal blogspot which seems to cover similar terrain.

the travellers rest .

 

Sometimes it simply is not your fault.You dont change, yet change still happens all around you anyway.But,as the I Ching would say :"No Blame".
On  odd occassions (since the demolition of The Rochdale Hamam) I now stop off at St Peter's swimming pool in Burnley for a sauna.Its actually part of the NHS Trust.It's a newish complex.
I cant say I care for the sauna there too much.The facilities are fine enough.Big steam room:Big Swimming Pool:Big Sauna:Big Jacuzzi.But ,typically,the  architects & designers forgot about the most important (yet most intangible ) thing.The sociability of the people who  use a building!
The experience for me there is spoiled by the lack of les Craic.
For me,the best saunas or turkish baths are those where people  sit in a communal area..face to face, and talk.Much like a good pub (minus clothes& alcohol!)
Burnley has none of that.All you get is a long horizontal row of plastic chairs outside the sauna& steam.With your back pressed against  a large glass brick wall that backs off to the swimming pool.You see nothing but a wall facing you.You dont even have  enough room to  stretch your legs.
It's like some  clinical waiting room corridor.No good at all for talking (your more likely to get whiplash than a conversation from such daft  poses......)The seats are squashed so tightly together you couldnt even move them (even if you had somewhere to move them too) .
Its strange how a building design hampers behaviour.Its almost designed to stop people staying too long......
Anyway.On Tuesday night I took this photo from the  car park there.Another example of buildings not being able to talk to one another?
The reason i took the photo is my interest in  "Ghost Signs"
Can you makeout the word  "HOTEL" ?
Yet you cannot  access this building  from the car park.The iron ladder you see runs to a deep,dark narrow canal below.......with no bridge across to it.
Who the hotel was actually meant for,I do not know.The other side of the building is now fast foods On t'other side , it  runs onto a dual carriageway .
Perhaps in the Olden Days  different roads & different buildings might have interested a person to rest their head .... sadly not any more...........

This is a sepia saturday post.
"...dancing, folk traditions or very silly poses..." is the prompt this week.Here you see one of my Aunt Brenda's Essex College photos from the 1920's.I dont recognise Brenda in it.Perhaps she was behind the camera....?

 

 

On Monday I attended the funeral of my neighbour of 28 years,Paul (pictured below).
A humanist service.Not a vicar ,priest or wreath in sight.
The service was led by Eileen O'Brien an actress who also lives on our road.
Anybody who is familiar with British telly will recognise her face.eg she's been in Coronation Street:East Enders;Brookside;Emmerdale.
The Service was very moving.Standing room only at Park Wood Crem.
No hymns or suchlike.Rather about a dozen or so of Paul's family & friend read out their favourite memories of his life.
(I must say, I would be intrigued if my funeral was like this.i dread to think what might be said!)
The music for the service included the Sandy Denny song Who Knows Where The Time Goes. And Tom Paxton You are Love.

R.I.P.PAUL.

Lang may yir lum reek wi ither fowk's coal

click image below for biggary & detail

frús'trey-ting-lee.........if enlarged ,you can see the faint inprint of a previous letter written over the top of this Xmas card.............................

"lang may yir lum reek "or 'long may your chimney smoke'.............a shortened version of “Lang may yir lum reek wi ither fowk's coal.” ( “Long may your chimney smoke with other people's coal.” )
This is my contribution to Alan's Sepia Saturday .As i told Alan the other week in Union Cross pub in Halifax I have a big box full of old (mainly sepia) photographs I need to scan/preserve.This is one i pulled out at random.The problem with many of these photos is ,although they are connected to my family, I really do not know the detail behind them.My Mum's side of the family came from Fife & Edinburgh. One of the few things I know about what is a very complicated family tree is that I am related to Robert Louis Stevenson .
The reason it is complicated & why big chunks are unknown to me is that my maternal grandfather was married 3 times .His first 2 wives (including my grandmother) died in childbirth.He had 3 children.One to each wife.My Mum had a half-brother & a half-sister.each of who had different mothers!


Although all the 3 were reasonably close they ended up living throughout the UK.One in the Home Counties of England.One in Edinburgh & my Mum in Yorkshire..My childhood was an endless series of trips to distant half -Aunts and quarter -cousins!


Genealogy has always been an ology-too-far for me .It's just too damn complicated!My maternal grandfather died (in Malta.he was a sailor) in 1951.He kind of abandoned my Mum when she was wee.So she was never very forthcoming on him & his relationships and the finer points of family history.Added to which my Dad's Polish family was even more complicated & distant to me .Astrology has always seemed a better bet!


Anyway this is a series of photos I had passed onto me when my half-Aunt Brenda died in Edinburgh 1985.This was a Christmas Card sent from Saranac Lake in upstate New York.


My guess is it was posted around the late-1800's or very early 1900's.Another guess it was sent to a member of my extended family.Maybe the sender too was a relative? I have several other photos from North America around the same period.I have about twelve from the series.Lots of Snow!It's really frustrating because one is of The Family Dog (with HIS name written on the back).I know the name of their bloody hound but not theirs!
Finally.For This Week.Here is another photo I dug out today.Again I know little.I seem to remember my Mum saying they were Family.and the house is in The Americas.Another mystery............but please look here.You could write a whole historical tv mini-series on the basis of this one photo alone!


Sometimes Life is like getting a 1000 piece jigsaw for Christmas.Then,come January you find out that 743 bits are missing................................

POSTCRIPT: [click ]
Coincidence...............after writing the above I went to Wiki and read up on the life of Robert Louis Stevenson.Turns out he wintered in Saranac in 1887! Of Course my post is probably 99% totally unconnected with this fact..but it does make you think.................

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imagined_Village

at last, a Protest Song about Afganistan..............

"..............Drawn from Martin Carthy's extensive repertoire, the song is a Napoleonic anti-war ballad about crippled cannon-fodder, brought bang up to date to reflect the toll paid by amputee veterans of Blair's wars..............." INDEPENDENT:

pressure drop

This is a Sepia Saturday post; to see other posts , click here 

https://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2020/09/sepia-saturday-538-19-september-2020.html Posting colourised images onto onto "Sepia Saturday" is a bit like Dylan going electric?! "Judas" :)

 

ßénchplayer · Pressure Drop

 

Some more old family photos I uploaded&coloured this week.

Some are of me & my brother Zyg as kids .Plus my Mum & Dad and Aunt Brenda..

Also a couple of Polish Funerals from the 1960's.

Although my Dad arrived in England during the war ( and joined the Polish Free Air Force Battle of Arnhem et al) , he never got an English passport. And because he deserted the Soviet Army ,early in the war, he was afraid,if he ever went home ,the Polish Communist Government might arrest him.

So ,apart from one visit back in 1965 to see his dying mum ( I was with him when we visited her in hospital:the only time I ever met my Grandma)

As a result, his only contact with the family was by letter. As the years rolled on, he/we recieved photos of funerals. His only contact with a past life......

Here are two examples of family funeral he couldn't attend in person.....

it's maybe why I ,in turn,was also attracted to photography.See the 12 colourised photos here:

https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Colour2/ 

A photo of me this week in Hebden Bridge with my Sauna/Swimming buddy Haley.A top published London author (non fiction:Asperger) and very nice lass. See all my week's photos here https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Sony-/

ßénchplayer · Up on the Roof

she's not there

This is a sepia saturday post  

from my Aunty Brenda's photo collection. an unknown stranger  outside her door in Perth Scotland....

I told you two  weeks ago that  we were attending  the funeral of Sue Trigg in Fixby.

What I havnt told you is that i missread the details of when the service was to be held ( despite me putting the Huddersfield Examiner's online Obituary on this blog!)
As a result ,we did go to Fixby Crematorium.
 We did attend at 2pm on Friday
But, It turns out  ,I got the week wrong and we attended on Friday 13th (not Friday 20th).
 To compound the mistake ,we followed the mourners into the 2pm service.
Now I wasnt surprised not to recognise any of the fellow mourners.
 I knew Sue from 50 years ago at School plus our various much more recent  1- to -1 meetings had been at Hebden Bridge Trades club.We  know none of her family or none of her more recent friends.
So . Me & Cath are sat at the back of the room at Fixby Crematorium on Friday 13th.
The only speaker was a Polish Priest who talked for about 5 minutes...but his accent was soo thick that I only understood about 10% of anything he said.
Although,halfway through,he did say "JILL" which set a few alarm bell ringing........
 No family members spoke. So after a short service I went to the coffin ( no photo on it). Touched the coffin. Made the sign of the cross and we followed the other mourners out the door and down a corridor.
I then shook hands with the priest, who was stood next to the framed photo of a beautiful elderly lady called (you guest it!) JILL. Me and Cath left blushing to avoid upsetting  to our fellow mourners......
I had never been to Fixby Crem before,so at least it turned out to be a 'rehearsal ' for Sue's funeral today.Although ,are not all funerals "rehersals" really?

Sue's funeral was packed today.Very moving ,and a great tribute to such a grand lass.
Lots of music! As we entered the service we were greeted by Santana playing "She's not there" playing full blast.
I couldnt help thinking that Sue ,sat in the sky,was looking down on me and taking the piss about my adventures the previous week !
During the service,the vicar asked the mourners to give Sue's  coffin a round of applause ( a new one on me).
Her service concluded with John Martyn singing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".
Now,the previous week i had taken this photo of a rainbow over the crematorium.Maybe this was the real purpose of my mistaken visit to Jill the previous week? one Door Shuts:  Another One Opens I Guess.......

Finally, my most recent photos......
See all these photos in one place here

the 3 ghosts of zimnoch { غزل‎ : an audio post}

"Once More we come like dust adance in air........" (Rumi:Ghazal :1720)

1962 school photo.

 

Two old men are sitting in a cafe. Gideon says to Dave , "Did you come on the bus?" Dave  replies, "Yeah, but I made it look like an Asthma attack."

As it happens, the story begins only a few hours after the photos in previous post..... taken on New Year's Eve....

At 5am on Friday 3rd January 2014 i was in the middle of a severe asthma attack.Over just 2 days this had developed into something scary.I was afraid.
When I was ten ,an older lad in the swimming pool (Woodside Baths)had put his big hand ontop of my head ,and pushed me down ,my head underwater...& held me there.Maybe he had attention-deficit,because he seemed to forget about me...but his hand didnt........
.I can still remember my childhood panic.The situation returned on Friday 3rd January 2014.Nothing ever really leaves us does it?
That same year (it must have been 1962?)I swallowed a big boiled sweet whole..Had I been alone, perhaps i would have died?Luckily,my big Brother Ziggy was nearby & he manage to get the sweet out.
Heimlich maneuver or a simple kick in the bollocks I cant remember.it doesn't really matter in the end.The main thing is it worked.
So i was rushed by ambulance to A&E in Halifax.I stayed  in hospital for 3 days.I was proper poorly.Perhaps not as sexy as a Stroke or a Heart Attack....but serious enough to these old bones..
I'm home now ,still on gardening leave & swallowing a shed load of antibiotics & steroid tablets (where is that damn Heimlich when you need him?)
I,ve been wallowing in my excitement on facebook .i know i tend to get manic & obsessive when something important happens to me.I also dislike the way i insist on turning everything into some sort joke or jolly caper.It's a way of avoiding i suppose
Anyway..........what i tell here for the first time,is 3 linked portraits/vignettes about my stay on the ward .Things that happened in our 4 -man sideward during my weekend in hospital.
Although not directly to do with my illness (you must be sick of hearing about it)Some extremely poignant  things occured.Some  ghosts past ;present & future.arrived.A reunion of sorts.The whole affair seemed like some  planned  Pagent's rehearsal.................

click bar directly below to hear the post /dont forget to turn on your audio:

You know ?I havnt walked out of doors since 1a.m. on the 1st of January 2014.......

3 Little Known Zimnoch Hospital Facts:

1962 was  the last time i ever stayed in hospital (6 weeks in traction with a fractured femur)
1965 in Poland.The only time I ever met my Polish grandmother.just the one occassion, on her hospital deathbed in Białystok
1952.six of the first nine months of my life were spent in hospital in Huddersfield. with Meningitis .



Me in 1960 (?) in a Leven,Fife  garden.From my Auty Brenda's photo album..

This is a Sepia Saturday post.


I've started colouring 100's of my Family photos!

https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/COLOURISED-IMAGES/ 

My Grandfather took these shots at the Lake Saranac "Winter Festival" in 1902 in upstate New York.

He lived and worked there for a couple of years with my Aunt Brenda.

(n.b.The audio at the moment is Jackson Browne)

The family rumour was that  my grandfather spent some of his time   in The States "Prospecting for gold". I really don't know about that! (sounds like bollocks to me!) But who knows? 

Uncertainty being something of a family  tradition.....

He later became a Barber in Fife:became  a Tory Councillor:joined the merchant navy and is buried in Malta.He died in 1953. He saw me once when I was a baby. So anything is possible!

All new ones will be added to this slideshow when i have processed them.Check back frequently! https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/COLOURISED-IMAGES/

Why did the Hebden Bridge chicken cross the road?

This Is A Sepia Saturday Post

Tweet
Hey Folks! It's my Aunty Brenda again! [2nd right] .This photo she labeled "Weekend Camp".I'm guessing wildly but I think it's in Essex (where she was at college) Maybe late 20's \Early 30's? A time when England still had an Empire & people rehearsed by putting on uniforms & prepare for another invasion.
I am currently reading "The Resurrectionist" by James Bradley. Interesting reading.I quote this about when the Brits first arrived in Australia and how they appeared to The Locals....
"'They thought us spirits once' he says,not turning in his saddle 'they took the colour of our skin for the pallor of the dead and imagined us their ancestors,lost and wandering in the living world once more."

My mind turned to Iraq+Afganistan
And So It Goes........................

I have created a new blog this week.With Inevitable  originality , I am calling it HEBDEN BRIDGE. You are welcome to visit it.I don't know if anything will come of it.I would like,eventually ,it to be as good as Joanne Casey's I Have Seen The Whole Of The Internet .She searches the Internet for interesting,quirky,amusing items & reposts them in one nice place.I would wish to do the same albeit specific to my hometown.

I live in Hebden Bridge.But,despite mentioning Hebden hundreds of times this blog,it  doesn't seem  to have touched the local internet-radar.For example ,if you visit Chris Radcliffe's hebdenbridge.co.uk  local "Blogs & Columns" you wont find my blog.

As I move beyond Hebden Bridge (Im thinking of my semi-move to Italy) I would like my vanity & fascination with Hebden seen just a little bit more........
So the idea is to have a separate blog.One that Google will recognize.Showing the quirky side of a quite particular place.Ideally.Eventually.Hopefully .it would be nice if ,whenever someone includes  the term "Hebden Bridge" in their Google Search,one of my alternative Hebden Bridge stories will be in the top ten results. Maybe it will one day..although,in the great scheme of things W.T.F.!
Hebden Bridge was a dead on its feet Yorkshire mill town in the 1960's.Then the hippies moved in.The place is now the Islington of the North.We have a split community.We locals found ourselves  aboriginals .....our  culture dismissed by trendy articulate middle class Southerners.[ a.k.a Bourgeoisie]
If you think I'm exaggerating ,check out  the movie Shed Your Tears And Walk Away[2011] About a split community & how Hebden Bridge has one of the highest teenage suicide rates in Britain.
The local trendy Orange Book liberalz are so articulate that  their alien  culture just drowns out the indigenous  community.

And So It Goes...............

Ironically+ Hypocritically ! I was drinking posh coffee in Hebden this morning with Shelley (over from Ireland).
'Helping her & Mick Promote their business in Italy. Today,we set up new facebook & twitter pages.She told me that ,a week on Sunday, they are placing a 4 week national advert in The Observer .It all looks good & I am happy to help.Watch this space.

A poptastic music video shot in Hebden Bridge. in 1986 Interestingly enough,me&cath moved into Hebden from Halifax in April 1985.But (before you ask!)That aint me on the Space-Hopper!

after the goldrush............................

More uploads from my family's history here.............more info shortly.........Yesterday,.I met My Brother Zyg with Cathy & my Sister-in-Law Jean at The Bear in Todmorden.We had Lunch &; he gave me several Newspaper cuttings relating to Our Family's presence in North America. (not read them yet!) +137 more photos to share including the one above..........It's kind of tricky sharing & scanning these photos as they are both small & stuck in a photo album.I dont want to damage anything so i will take my time to copy them safely........

Here are the first batch I've uploaded.Something I never knew, My Aunty Brenda was born in Canada. My Grandfather moved there in the early 1900's "looking for gold" :"goldpanning" Whatever........I will give you more detail when i understand it more myself.
I have a postcard from Canada.Later my Grandfather must have moved South, hence these photo from Saranac Lake in upstate New York. .

I have been sharing these photos on facebook with Historic Saranac Lake
Turns Out It's Not Connected with Robert Louis Stevenson.But Interesting,None The Less (just mere coincidence a Family member returned?)......
.Sorry I have been AWOL from blogging .will visit you soon!Check Out Alan's Sepia Saturday for other romps !

Joppa

This week's sepia saturday prompt photo is of a sister & brother looking happily,lovingly at one another.
I took from this that the two  kids didnt really  care that the photographer was there or not. (S)he was incidental and  accidental .

They would have  looked  that   way anyway......

With this thought in mind .My offering for this week's post

is  below.

A photo of my Mum.Aged about 3-4? 

It's taken in a bus shelter on Portobello seafront in Edinburgh.1930-ish?

. The elderly lady is My Mum's Aunt Nellie.

I remember Aunt Nellie well from my own young  childhood.She was ,obviously much older/smaller & wrinkly then! She was  nearly 100 when she finally died.
I even stayed in her house in Joppa .We used to visit her when i was roughly to same age as Mum  in this photo.I remember travelling upon a   steam train  ( The Flying Scotsman?) directly from Halifax Railway Station to Joppa Station ( pre-Beeching )

My bedroom   in Joppa  had a  big brass bed! If i stood on tip toes & looked outside  I could (if  I stretched!)  view a tiny corner of the sea ,' just visible from the  top  right hand corner of the  window
There was lots of "family politics" floating about on the horizon...... .Even by the late 50's/early 60's.
Aunty Nellie lived alone in that house near the sea.
Her sister Aunty Margaret lived with my Aunt Brenda 100 yards away on the other side of the busy main road into the city.
They never visited /talked to each other for  perhaps 20   years......
(How strange  to be so close , yet so invisible........)
We stayed at Nellie's and visited Margaret for Tea. Nellie of course never joined us.
 I still dont know the cause of the feud.They didnt have blogs then.Who Knows.......
My Mum as a child was  passed around various family members ( Her own Mum dead in childbirth & her dad at sea and remarried)
.My Mum showed me this photo a few years before she died.
Here  we  see  her and Nellie.
She said they had not been "allowed" to meet at the time......
But evidently they did! but in secret .
(I never thought to ask who the photographer was. )
What is even more poignant , Nellie looks very much like my Mum did  in her final years.......
Make of that what you will.
Your guess is really as good  as mine.although I cant help thinking that that Me ,brother Zyg my Dad & Mum staying at Nellie's &  not at Margaret 's was meant as a "statement".......

Meanwhile.Things are still shit for me.
Various worries currently.
It really pisses me off how people seem to think me laid -back . I'm not really .I keep it  too myself generally ( apart from here.now.and to the world!)     😎😎😍😎
We even got a letter recently criticising us for posting a photo of us smiling on New Year's Eve. We must not be "that bothered" ,obviously!
Photos hide more that they reveal. Although that is ,i    believe ,a bloody good haircut wot i got today !!
Not bad for a bloke who is 65 on July 30th........!
Anyway.The best bit of news I,ve had this  week is that "The Blitz" Tearooms in the Square in Hebden Bridge is closing down!
(tripadvisor link)
Bloody Appalling place IMHO.
Perhaps they may now open a Tea Rooms in Syria instead?
'Never did like the concept. Fake Nostalgia. Now, had  they served Spam& Powdered Eggs & dressed the waitresses in stripy Concentration Camp threads..well,maybe it would have worked..

but,as it was, the place just reeked  of Brexit & Nigel Farages socks and farts.......

Saturday update: we went to an Art Exhibition in Hebden Bridge at north light studio.I saw a very regal (royal) family hiding behind screen ,spying on us.........

 

'ats

another of Brenda's Saranac Photos .Lots of fine hats & bonnets......Part of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival

my contribution to the first sepia saturday of 2018 is around the theme of "hats". 

To see the contributions of others , visit here

I dont own a hat. I tend to borrow from others........

in 2008 i was a member of Grant's Stag Party in Benidorm.Most of the lads were from an Oldham rugby club .Grant was ,at the time,on St.Helens books. Mick (pictured with me) is an ex-prop forward with Oldham RLFC.We all went as members of Village People ( i was the token Polish Plumber).It was so fucking hot.....I had hold my moustache as the sweat prevented it sticking properly.......see other photos here

2005 in the car park of a shoppimg mall in Northampton,Massachusetts.it was Febuary & freezing...My son,  Chris,pictured next to me.We were guests of my good Muslim  friend Ayse who was studying in New England at the time. a grand photo i took of Chris & Ayse.https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-ff4c2/i-7Q9TK8x/O

at the 2015 Peterloo Massacre Memorial in Manchester.See more photos here .( i took a lot of photos of famous TV & Movie 'faces')  Actually that IS my own hat...but I look a bit of a prune wearing it.(Its in a drawer, somewhere.........!)

n.b. See more of my photos https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/

all and sundry.

This week's sepia saturday holds the theme of "groups".

Feb: 1965.
My brother Zyg's 21st Birthday Party in a club on  Clare Road ,Halifax.
Top Row.(l/r) Uncle Gordon ( ex-RAF prisoner of war in Germany for 3 years):Zyg:Me (stood on a box):my Dad Wladylaw (ex-Polish Air Force /got a gong inThe Battle of Arnheim).
Bottom Row (l/r) Aunty Brenda :My Mam,Marjory : Aunty Dot :Cousin Pat.

1967:
Huddersfield   Road,Halifax.
 (photo by Halifax Courier)
Clare Hall School Rugby League team.1966/67 season.
 That's me 4th left/back row .I dont think it looks much like me ? Behind the cameraman were members of the girls hockey team .I think I was attempting to appear hard  !

1996. me with my Transpersonal Gestalt Oasis  Group in Boston Spa. That's me on the floor 'looking a right spangle!

1999? Rochdale Turkish Baths. Me:front row middle.

"The Shining" meets Hitchcocks's "Birds"................caught by Cath this afternoon in front of our new  Living Room  window..

As I create this post  I listen to this .At the end of March me & Cathy have Tickets for Young Fathers! 'lovely Band!
Finally i found  here:  a mystery photo..............just because everybody is looking at you...doesnt mean your paranoid.