Down memory lane

I was having a bit of a tidy-up recently and came across a bunch of old transparencies from the 1970s.  Most are family shots but a few are of around and about home and this one caught my eye.  It's taken not far from our house, looking over the fields of a neighbouring farm:

Typical Northern Irish farmland in the 1970s.  It looks like it's early spring - there's not much growth in the green green grass of home and the fields in the distance look ploughed ready for crops (barley maybe, or more likely potatoes. Which reminds me of my favourite Oirish Joke: Two Auld Fellows standing by a gate contemplating life - mostly in silence. The sound of a lorry approaching shatters their peace. It passes without comment. Some moments later, one says: “Drink Guinness? Sure they’ll be telling us to eat potatoes next”

There's not that much of interest in this shot - a lot of not-very-exciting electricity poles and wires criss-crossing the countryside.  The small clump of trees in the middle distance was referred as the 'Wee Moss' by my grandfather and often we would walk over there on a Sunday just for a stretch of legs.  

What caught my eye were the rather beautiful stone gate-posts, all whitewashed.  With that exception the same scene today isn't much different - the trees and hawthorn hedges are bigger, of course, but the poles and wires are still there.  What isn't there today are the white stone gate-posts - they've mostly been replaced by grey concrete cast things - if they’ve been replaced at all, but no-one whitewashes them nowadays. And the gates (which would have been iron work in the 70s, possibly even hand-turned) are now mass produced aluminum affairs.  What a shame.

I mentioned finding some family shots and this one made me look twice.  It's of my mum, sitting in her favourite chair in the living room and obviously she didn't want her photograph taken, so she's holding up a magazine as defence.  But the way that magazine fell...:

My mother, April 1981.  That room today hasn't changed much.  She still uses the same chair, the piano is in the same place (though it doesn't get played so much these days) and, believe it or not, the same curtains are still hanging.  And yes, that means they are around 50 years old.  They're faded, of course, and a little religious in places (holy) but my mum grew up during wartime and rationing and so doesn't replace things if there's life still in them.  I keep asking her to pose for me in that chair in that same room but at the age of 90 she resolutely refuses, which I have to respect.  So be it. 

If you're wondering how I can be so precise about the date of this photograph the clue is in the Sunday Times Magazine cover.  A quick online search reveals it to be from April 5th 1981 (the lady on the cover is the politician Shirley Williams).  It's a pity my mum's hand is covering the headline, which reads 'Is she too nice?'