While Alan's prompt picture (below) shows jolly people on a beach, I managed to find a group of people being jolly in spite of colder climate. It's another photo from my mum's childhood album - which I have continued to explore a bit, together with her memories written down many years later in a separate notebook.
The photo is from 1933, and mum is the little girl sitting furthest to the right on the wheel barrow, three years old. The photo was taken at the farm where she and her parents were living back then. My grandparents were not farmers (my grandfather was a teacher), but rented a flat in a house at that farm (~1932-39). There were no other small children in the neighbourhood for my mum to play with; but the couple who owned the farm had four grown up ones - two sons and two daughters. The jolly people with my mum in this photo are those four young adults, plus three visiting friends.
Sepia Saturday 510
I decided to once again turn back to my mum's photo album in search of something to connect to this week's Sepia Saturday theme - "that forgotten genre - the miserable photograph". *
I found her first school photo (1938):
Either they weren't looking forward to the summer holidays at all - or else they were specifically instructed not to smile... :-)
Mum must be the one standing in the middle, wearing a flowery dress. (I would have added "with a big bow in her hair, and looking serious" - but that would apply to every one of them!)
In a separate notebook from 1979, forty years later, mum wrote down some comments and memories connected to some of the photos in this early photo album of hers. On the first page, she says that she was inspired to do this because she and dad had just been going through a lot of other old photos, and having difficulties identifying people etc. 1979 was the year when my paternal grandmother died; and her old albums have almost no notes at all - plus there are lots of loose photos not sorted into albums as well. (I still have those albums and boxes of photos as well.) So I totally get - and appreciate - why mum had this thought.
Even so, it strikes me now that even mum's notes do not always verify for example who is who (including herself) in a group photo. (Because to her it was obvious - but...)
I guess the same is probably true with my own albums.
* Sepia Saturday 509 theme image:
"Six people sat around a table and not a smile amongst them."
