Saturday, February 28, 2004
Yeah, so of course I'm scared. Sometimes. I mean, terrorists on one side may drop off anthrax at any time because it matters not to them if we all die because they've convinced themselves that they'll go to heaven because they're sure that if you read between the lines of their holy book of choice what God actually meant was "I gave you free will so you'd choose not to use it. Follow these laws which I made up using one of those origami fortune teller things and then deal with your intellectual impotence by fucking shit up!". Then, on the other hand, are the fascists that took 1984 as a good starting point, not a warning. "In the Commons today David Blunkett announced the end to jury trial, the end of the right of appeal and the mandatory death penalty for all crimes. 'War is Peace!' He announced. 'Freedom is Slavery!' He added to approval from the backbenches. 'Ignorance is Strength!' He quipped as Clare Short was ripped apart by rabid dobermen." I don't have much faith in the benevolence of either side towards my freedom, or indeed continued existence.
So I look for my continuity in the past. I don't know where I might be going so I seek to understand from where I came from. Unfortunately most of the evidence is gone. In the last few years of her life we did try to encourage my Nan to talk about her life, it was hard work and we didn't have a huge amount to show for it, my abiding memories are her talking about when my Dad led the church choir in to the Christmas service one year, or how as a young girl she played Emily in 'The Ni**er Play' which I frankly didn't want to hear any more about.
I only really got a look at her large photo collection after she died. It's a real shame because there's so many photographs, even in the small selection I've seen, that I want to ask her about. People who would have been Great-Aunts and Uncles that I want to know about. It's like Shooting the Past, I want her here to explain to me where it is I come from.
Instead, I have to make do with the occasional scribbled note on the back of a photograph. This one has an address which is near Catford, in South-East London for you out-of-towners, and says 'our new house'. There's no date but I would guess from my Nan's age it was the early 1920s. The children are, left-to-right, Frank, Bill, my Nan Lillian, and Nell, all of whom I assume are her siblings. There's another photograph I haven't put up of a terraced house that my Nan wrote on that was where the family lived while the men were away fighting in World War One. Of course, that photo and this one weren't taken by Nan, so my question would be about who took these photos? Her father? What was he like?
I suspect this is one of the oldest photographs we still have. These are my great-great grandparents, my Nan's maternal grandparents. Proper Victorians, though again there's no date so I don't know whether this photo was taken while Victoria was still alive though as my Nan was born around 1910 it's a good chance. But all I knew of these people before seeing the photo was their names on a family tree my aunt had done a few years ago. There don't seem to have been any important personages on any of the branches of our family tree, always common as muck and Londoners without being Cockneys.
This is my Nan's uncle as an angelic choirboy. His name was Walter but apparently he was always called Mick. Unfortunately he was run down by a horse and cart while working but Nan doesn't provide details about when.
This is my grandfather who I never knew as he died when my father was young. It was always difficult to get my Nan to talk about him, I know what he did, how they'd go to Covent Garden to get the cheapest seats to see opera, but it was difficult to find out what he was like, though there's a noticeable physical resemblance in the men in our family. It came as a surprise even to my father when Nan revealed he was partially sighted due to a couple of accidents.
So perhaps I want to take photographs to aid my often poor memory which I'm half-convinced is in the early stages of CJD. And maybe I want to learn about and preserve the past to reassure myself that these were all people that had a past and future and there is no reason why I don't have both as well.
So I look for my continuity in the past. I don't know where I might be going so I seek to understand from where I came from. Unfortunately most of the evidence is gone. In the last few years of her life we did try to encourage my Nan to talk about her life, it was hard work and we didn't have a huge amount to show for it, my abiding memories are her talking about when my Dad led the church choir in to the Christmas service one year, or how as a young girl she played Emily in 'The Ni**er Play' which I frankly didn't want to hear any more about.
I only really got a look at her large photo collection after she died. It's a real shame because there's so many photographs, even in the small selection I've seen, that I want to ask her about. People who would have been Great-Aunts and Uncles that I want to know about. It's like Shooting the Past, I want her here to explain to me where it is I come from.
Instead, I have to make do with the occasional scribbled note on the back of a photograph. This one has an address which is near Catford, in South-East London for you out-of-towners, and says 'our new house'. There's no date but I would guess from my Nan's age it was the early 1920s. The children are, left-to-right, Frank, Bill, my Nan Lillian, and Nell, all of whom I assume are her siblings. There's another photograph I haven't put up of a terraced house that my Nan wrote on that was where the family lived while the men were away fighting in World War One. Of course, that photo and this one weren't taken by Nan, so my question would be about who took these photos? Her father? What was he like?
I suspect this is one of the oldest photographs we still have. These are my great-great grandparents, my Nan's maternal grandparents. Proper Victorians, though again there's no date so I don't know whether this photo was taken while Victoria was still alive though as my Nan was born around 1910 it's a good chance. But all I knew of these people before seeing the photo was their names on a family tree my aunt had done a few years ago. There don't seem to have been any important personages on any of the branches of our family tree, always common as muck and Londoners without being Cockneys.
This is my Nan's uncle as an angelic choirboy. His name was Walter but apparently he was always called Mick. Unfortunately he was run down by a horse and cart while working but Nan doesn't provide details about when.
This is my grandfather who I never knew as he died when my father was young. It was always difficult to get my Nan to talk about him, I know what he did, how they'd go to Covent Garden to get the cheapest seats to see opera, but it was difficult to find out what he was like, though there's a noticeable physical resemblance in the men in our family. It came as a surprise even to my father when Nan revealed he was partially sighted due to a couple of accidents.
So perhaps I want to take photographs to aid my often poor memory which I'm half-convinced is in the early stages of CJD. And maybe I want to learn about and preserve the past to reassure myself that these were all people that had a past and future and there is no reason why I don't have both as well.
