Rolling back the years

The packing continued apace at my house over the weekend, including boxing up all the old photos and albums that I inherited from my grandmother.

I love those photos. I am thinking about starting some sort of Facebook or Instagram account with all of them.

The youngest thinks I’m crazy, she doesn’t know why anyone would want to look at old photos. But I find them fascinating and posting them would be a lovely way to commemorate them all.

Nan’s photo collection is surprisingly large. I’m a bit blown away by how many there are from the 1920s and 30s, some date back even further.

My grandmother grew up in Kitchener, near Cessnock, which I wouldn’t have thought was somewhere that placed much importance on the expense of having a camera and developing photos.

I have a few fleeting memories of my great grandmother’s house in Cessnock and it was very humble.

But they were a family that embraced photography. My grandmother loved taking photos and worked in a photographic studio after leaving school – which is where she met my grandfather, photographing him on shore leave during World War II. She also had a career as a photo colourist that post-dated her marriage and starting a family – very progressive!

I look at the old photos and it dazzles me that my nan grew up a world so completely different to mine, where transport was horse and carriage and washing was done by hand in a tin tub.

Nan kept everything – the tin tub in the main photo of this blog post was used as a soldier crab fun park when I was a kid at Hawks Nest. We would fill it with sand and refresh it with salt water every day and catch guppies and crabs to place in the little world and watch them in fascination.

Most of Nan’s photos have notes on the back of them, listing the people who appear in them. Nan meticulously wrote the captions so we would know who everyone was when she was gone.

I think sharing the photos will be an opportunity to check those details and look at each image more closely.

DD also thinks I’m a bit crazy, because the last thing I need is another project. I am drowning in projects and responsibilities and life dramas.

Ah well, let’s see how I go. If I get it up and running after my big move, I will be on your case to follow the page.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur of selling furniture – at one point there were three cars out the front loading up – and packing boxes.

I get the keys to my new place on Friday, but I’m not the official owner until a week later. I will start moving a few bits and bobs over the weekend. I can’t transfer too much over because I need to wait for the new floor to go down.

The body corporate approved me replacing the carpet with vinyl floorboards last Friday! Woo hoo!

But the new floor can’t go in until I’m the official owner, so I am facing an undetermined period of homelessness. Just to add to my life stresses!

Trying to sort that out is today’s job. Well, a sliver of the day will be devoted to that anxious task, as I will be mostly working my usual mad pace. I am tired before that even begins.

How was your weekend? I hope you dodged the showers and did something fun.

Song of the day: Barbra Streisand “Memory”