If I could turn back time ...

A couple of weeks ago, something very strange happened.  I was browsing through Facebook when a name came up on a local page, of someone I hadn't seen for a while, so I clicked to see what they were up to. At the top of their page (as far as I got, honestly) there was a message, from someone naming other people they had worked with years ago ... people that I knew my lovely Mam had also worked with.  I contacted the lady in question, wondering if she was my Mam's friend from years ago, saying who I was, who my Mam was, and apologising in case I was completely barking up the wrong tree.  The very next day the lady contacted me to say I had unleashed all these memories for her ... they were best friends from age 14 and 15, when Agnes (Mam) joined her firm as an apprentice upholstress, until my Mam died in 1974 ... she went on to say that she had lots of photographs of my Mam and herself on various holidays they spent together.

Best Friends ... Mam on right xx

The next day she sent me some gorgeously vintage photos of my beautiful, glamorous mother.  It's funny, but when you're a child I don't think you really think much about your parents and their life before ... as you get older, that's when it becomes interesting.  My Mam died when I was 12, so I knew very little of her life and now the rest of her family have died, I thought I would never find out anything more about her.

The first photographs were taken in London at the Festival of Britain, in 1951, held to raise morale after the Second World War.  Oh, the style! Beautiful floral dresses with figure enhancing nipped-in waists that would be the height of fashion nowadays, swagger coats with huge buttons on the front, all worn with red lipstick and sunny smiles.

The next batch of pictures were taken on holiday in Ireland, where rationing had ended, so the two friends made merry, eating all the sweets and ice cream that they had so long been deprived of, and making themselves sick in the process! There were pictures taken in Dublin, and also in my home town ... Photographs that had been tinted by hand, very painstakingly.

Roses round the door ... x

On a wall two minutes from my home!

with Grandma, Aunty and baby cousin
on 'my' beach! xx

On holiday at Margate x

I am so happy that I have been given this insight into my Mam's late teens and twenties and seen the beautiful woman who I was lucky enough to have as a mother.  I don't have many photos of my parents because of circumstances beyond my control, so to have been given these pictures means the world. Thank you so much Janet, this post is dedicated to you, Mam, and best friends everywhere ...

Have a lovely day ...

Love Claire xxxx