beside the seaside.
Once a year, the Miners Welfare would have a day trip to the seaside. This would have been a real experience for my mum and her family as they didn't have holidays. I don't know if this is Blackpool or Bridlington, but my mum and grandma are back left. Grandma's friends are Annie Andrews (whom I remember just looking EXACTLY the same) front left with her son Reginald and Clara Dawson (widowed early - I knew her too) next but one in the dark coat with a brooch - just look at their beaming faces!! These ladies would have been mid 30's in this photo - a fact that I find very hard to digest.
Here they are again - minus Reginald. Clara (2nd right) always acted as though she was "a cut above the rest" according to my mum (although the birthday presents she gave were always recycled - I remember Mama's laughing wickedly about this fact!). In later years, Mamas, Annie, Clara and Mrs Eastwood (white coat) used to clean at the colliery offices and I used to sometimes accompany them of an evening. They had enormous fun every evening and played the most wicked tricks on each other - night after night. I remember one evening my Gran dressing as a bloke and standing in the urinals as Clara (the widow) was about to clean them. How she jumped and screamed! They all laughed so much that pelvic floors were tested and failed! I don't know anyone who had as much fun at work.
26 comments:
They do look like they're having great fun in these photos!
How this takes me back - I have photos like this myself and I remember the great days out, having to get up really early to get the bus, sandwiches made the night before and packed into an old biscuit tin - my favourite was lettuce and tomato !!
And as you say, by today's standards they all look so old, but their hearts were young and they knew how to have fun that didn't involve money booze, or facebook.
Happy days indeed.
What fabulous pictures and memories!
weather has improved over the years , i can remember having a summer coat! and wearing warm clothes all year - global warming?
How lovely to have those memory.
It's not so *very* long ago is it, when just one day at the seaside was considered a holiday. Did you have 'wakes week' in Sheffield - like we did in Stoke?
There was something extra enjoyable about all the industries and schools in an area having the same holidays - sort of festive :-)
During Potters' Fortnight, Blackpool and Rhyl would be awash with Stokie accents. The newsagents even sold our local daily newspaper for the duration. Landladies used to comment that they knew when Potters' fortnight began because that very night, in the dining room, every single diner, every man, woman and child, in unison, would turn over their dishes to examine the backstamp :-)
Love the photo - looks as if the weather was "bracing"! Its true - in these old photos women seem to look older - not so much time or money for beauty "products" perhaps! Great to hear your memories!
Liz @ Shortbread & Ginger
I think your comment about these women only being in their 30s says such a lot! When I remember the people in the village I grew up in they looked so much older than women (and men) but particularly women of the same age do now. I have similar photos of grandparents, aunts and uncles who look about 60 in their 40s mostly from the way they dressed and their hair styles. I always love your posts about you childhood memories:)
Happy memories. It was such a treat to have a day at the seaside and no holiday, how times have changed.
wonderful photos. True comrades in arms.
Love the spectator pumps.
Gosh were they really all in their 30s?! Life must have been very hard back then, I thought they were all over 50 when I saw the photo!
Wanda, Potters fortnight....then they got rid because of school terms. I was in Turkey a couple of years back and lifted the plates up...Steelite! Great photos.
Great photos, they remind me of seaside snaps from my Mum and Dad's photo tin :)
Twiggy x
fabulous photos....... my mum has some similar pics of groups walking, buttoned-up, hats on, smiling at the camera ...... a popular pose of the period??
I remember day trips to the seaside too, Barry Island or Porthcawl for us. The long journey home and the soggy tomato sandwiches are what stick in my memory.
Great photographs and memories -they look like they are all having a wonderful time !
I've got similar family photographs. They look really old too!
They seem to be having great fun, don't they.
xxx
Which collery offices did they clean?
At first I was going to say the photo was not taken at Bridlington because of the clock tower in the background, but then I think I remember one on the south side near the spa. I don't think it's there now. Too bad these memories slip away, but we do have photographs thank goodness. I remember the wakes and the factory holidays when the whole place was closed down for a week or more -- and if it rained the whole week, too bad Bridlington doubled its population in the summer.
They certainly look as though they are having fun. Women had much harder lives then so they aged more quickly I think.
Diane you are so funny! You have brought happy tears to my eyes! What a great bunch of folk. I almost feel that I knew them thanks to your wonderful descriptions. Fantastic post! x
I love reading memories about your family!!!!
xxxx
We've got photos too of my Mum and Dad when they were courting, walking along the prom at Bridlington, and of all of us with my aunty when I was young. Thinking about it now, if you were only at the seaside for the day the photographer must have posted the photos off to you because they surely wouldn't have been able to print them straight away.
What great memories, I am amazed you remember who they all are! You must have been very young then. t'other Diane
"... pelvic floors were tested..."
:-) Loved that.
Having fun at work, given the amount of time spent there, is paramount.
Pearl
Great old photos and memories. In their thirties. They must have worked hard and long. But what great sense of humour they must have had.
Lovely to think of them enjoying their trip to the sea side. Life must have been so hard.
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