Wigan Album

Lovely photo Dennis, I was just going to say, I wonder were they all are today. But you're here, on WW. Good one.

What a picture, what a photograph !
I love the the replica of Granny's handbag, just wonderful Dennis.

What an absolutely brilliant photo! The colour brings it to life. The days before "designer trainers", when little girls wore dresses and had ribbons in their hair. She seems to be wearing a school gabardine mac too. Young "Compo" looks a rum 'un, Dennis. He and Ken look as if they're wondering what mischief they can get up to next!

It’s a lovely colourised version of a fifties photo. Shows up the way children dressed much better. Woolly jerseys and socks, short pants and sandals, windjammers and macs. I love the way the little girl is copying mum with her handbag. That is a treasure of a photo.

Lovely photo which captures the era perfectly ! Good one Dennis.

Dennis, was Bobby & Christine courting with having their arms linked? he looks to be eying up the KitKats or Tiffin bars she has in her bag too.
Has the hair colouring run down your forehead or had you been wiping it with a dusty hand, a great photo though of great times you had, and I like those cars with shiny chrome radiator grilles in the background too.

Probably our Ken turned me upside down and dipped my head in Gorses Brook Cyril. What could I do, he was bigger than me!
Sad thing is, I’m probably the only one left of this little group.
But my o my the 50s was a great time to be a child in Aspull. The Pits had mostly gone and Mother Nature was working hard to mend the damage done.
One of the things I miss the most is the quiet. It was a time when you could lay on your back in a field and hear nothing but the breeze stirring the grass and the birds chirping in the hedgerows. A time when you could take off your shoes and socks and paddle in a stream of water catching Cockies.
Just writing this bit about those times brings back a load of happy memories, but I’m glad I have those memories to fall back on, especially with the way things are now.

Dennis how wonderfully put, yes I remember around were we lived how nature had begun reclaiming the scars from the pits and how you could then paddle in the streams that had begun to run clear and ponds too with the wonderful and varied life within them, I too also miss those days of how you describe as children laying back and hearing nothing but the breeze in grass, I also remember the odd heavy rattle of a train and its whistle, I also liked hearing the Skylarks and their flying so high you couldn't see them and yes also those birds of the hedgerows. Though I can't recall the last I heard Sparrows chirping or the wonderful singing ranges and the mimicking of sounds by Starlings, they both were once so common they were named as being so in books.

Remember when the Trim phones came out, folks in gardens would be going into their house to answer the phone only to find it was Starlings who were mimicking their phones warbling ring tone, they were clever birds even mimicking ice cream van tunes.

You can change the canvas colours,
rearrange the chairs ,
add within more boxes ,
of fresh and sprightly wares.
For within this box I'm holding
are the memories that I keep ,
and I play them when I choose to ,
either waking time or sleep .
I may be now behind it ,
out of date with modern speed,
but the richness of my memories ,
fulfil, sustain , my need..

e..again your poem is I beautiful..it brought a tear to my eye.

Loved this photo! Days when children could just be children! Go on an adventure all by themselves ... just enjoying life!

If you want to hear sparrows chirruping Cyril , then come round to my gaff . There’s hundreds of the buggers in my hedges , and it can be bloody deafening at times .

I hold myself responsible , as It’s been costing me almost as much to feed the brids as it has been to feed misel ‘ lately , but the damn things are threatening to eat me out of house and home at present .

Any suggestions ?…

… Sparrow pie ‘appen ?

Starlings seem to congregate on the ariels and telephone wires on Greenwood Road, Standish. I don't know why they choose this particular street but some days there can be at least a hundred of them singing like billy o .

Ozy & Poet, you're lucky to have sparrows and starlings in such abundance, there's not a twitter around where we live, there are other birds but not them. We did have sparrows at one time and they always preferred to nest in next doors eaves, until some Australians moved in and they like all Aussies seem to be hated anything that flew, crouched or crawled and had the gaps where the sparrows nested blocked off, they ofttimes also nested in a overflow pipe hole in the brickwork on our side, but I haven't seen any for about ten years even though the hole is still there.

Poet, it will be nice listening to all those starlings congregating and singing their own particular songs at dusk. Shearing's should get a coach trip up to go around near Ozy's and then onto Greenwood Road to see and hear the sparrows and starlings - it'd be a sell out.

Those gun toting Americans are shooting then roasting sparrows and starlings to eat Ozy, mind you they will shoot anything that moves even people, though they haven't resorted to roasting and eating them - yet, well not that we've heard of. https://www.reddit.com/r/Hunting/comments/c80txt/roasted_english_sparrow_and_starling/

Ozy, I agree. They are eating me out of hose and home as well, and now I've bought a Bird Hotel.(That's what it says on the box) You can put plants on the bottom, water in the middle, and food on top.It also has a little cover on top with a sola light which comes on at dusk.Im wondering now, will they choose the Hotel, or the bushes.

A lass is no good without her handbag so many things to put in!

Great picture. Love the boys' socks. I had some like theirs once.