Wigan Album

Something captivating here. Warm expressions looking directly at you through time. A warm welcome beckoning you in for a brew.

Like something out of 'Hobson's Choice'...

Shades of newspaper-wrapped Fish 'n' Chips, and deep-filled trifle bowls.

Tinned salmon on Sunday. Carnation milk for the strawberries. Bradman's Australians.

It looks very homely and comforting. I can imagine Al Bowly singing on the wireless.... 'Long Ago and Faraway'.....Very atmospheric.

It's a real moment in time..they look like they could move any moment.

"Thats's the kettle whistling .... Shall we have another cup of Horniman's?"

Poet.
I bought a small tin of Carnation - and pear halves -, some weeks' ago, 'for the first time in ages', and I still enjoy it! I'd also like to mention, though, two other particular tinned items which continue to shiver on the 'lower' shelf my fridge since being kindly given to me as part of an hamper, by an army of schoolchildren about three years' ago: A tin of salmon (bbe Dec 2019), and, on a wing and a prayer, a tin of sardines (bbe Dec 2017) - Shades of Scott's Hut, eh? However, my tired kitchen, and living room have both answered-well to recent re-furbishment. My late mother used to love watching the back-packed army of schoolchildren as they marched past the front of our house on their way to the nearby library; "Hey up, they're here", she used to say, ... "The Turtles are comin'." Your mention of Donald Bradman reminded me of a workmate's reference to Keith Miller's telling of the moment when as a 20 year-old Test debutant in front of a hushed crowd, and about to face his first ball, heard the distant sound of a steam train - enough to give any young Test debutant the heebie-jeebies, and shades of The Close what. I'm pretty sure that Jarvo could conjure-up something pertaining to wafted willow.
Veronica mentions Horniman's tea: We sometimes bought it, and I seem to recall that stamplike tokens were to be had from the side of its packets?

An apple pie left outside to cool. Tongue and tomato sandwiches. Autumn coming on...the shadows fall, on to the grandfather clock ticking in the hall...

This really is one of those photos that do take you back to childhood it's a belter! Food was still rationed then as well - especially sugar. Mother must have pulled out all the stops to make trifle. it was probably left over from yesterday and kept under a cloth in the pantry!

Nicely Jarvo, nicely. And I can't, at this particular moment, think of two words that sit as-well together than do apple and pie - I have fish 'n' chips down as three words.

Grandad shaved in the kitchen sink with lathering brush and blade from a packet screwed to his razor..Braces swinging behind him surrounded by jars of loose tea and sugar. Milk in a bucket of water. Butter in a dish.
Instead of a door there was a curtain to the parlour.
His brass pocket watch on the sideboard. Music inside the piano stool.
And as Jarvo observes, always the distant ticking clock.
Philip , he remembered Larwood.

I wonder if that was the reason Nestle's condensed milk was bought because of the sugar rationing. It was used in tea and I remember eating it on a 'butty' it was really sweet - no wonder toothache woke me up in the night time! I have really enjoyed reading all the comments due to this lovely photo.

Poet...Your mention of "Tinned Salmon On Sunday" reminded
me of my mother. She used to say, "On Sunday I am going to
open `A NICE TIN OF SALMON`, red salmon, not that pink stuff

Like you I can recall food tastes over a gap of nearly 70 years. I wouldn't eat meat as a child and my mother used to give me watercress party butties, triangles if you didn't call them that! However she always put loads of salt on them and fortunately for the modern way of thinking gave me a lifelong aversion to salty things. My dad told me the story of a neighbour who was in front of him in our local shop. She asked for 2 ounces of boiled ham then said, better make it a quarter as we've got company. My dad could have eaten that on his snap!
However nothing was wasted, mum could make a cake out of a stone so the family lore went and she would deplore the waste that goes on today.

Ray it was always a 'nice tin of 'summat' or other'! I recal the mixed fruit with the cherries. Birds custard poured over apple pie and homemade currant cake with loads of 'best butter'. I also remember my dad shaving at the kitchen sink - a round mirror hung by the side of the window. Much as as I love remembering - there are things I wouldn't want to re- live - if you didn't have a bathroom for example!

Veronica,speaking of bathrooms,we didn't have one in my early teenage years, we had a 'hot water geezer' on the little pantry wall,and still have the photograph where I've written on the back of it in pencil "don't come in the pantry Dad,as I'm having a bath"..oh! the luxury eh..

Poet.
Fine words, sir, but those jars in the flight path of granddad's bouncing braces, on the kitchen table, had really been tempting fate. And I pity those 'others' who had remembered Larwood, with less affection; batsmen at the receiving end of his demon bowling and, also, his baying critics. In all fairness though, Australia took him as 'one of their own' during his later years.

Ray, I was always glad that my grandma prepared the tin of salmon for she would pick out the skin and bone before mashing it up, adding perhaps a little vinegar.
If grandad did it you would get the lot straight from the tin swimming in juice, slimy skin and the soft crunchy backbone.

Same with me Maureen everybody had to clear out- but then I would go to the private baths every week. I still go to the baths now - but for a swim - I don't come out until I have swum 30 lengths! Getting back to the picture - it has stirred many memories - more good than bad despite the lack of bathroom facilities!

. GrannieAnnie I too remember little old ladies asking for 2 oz of boiled ham. They usually wore a shawl! My mother would send me, for a quarter of ham and a quarter of Heart - something you don't see in shops these days!

What a scary for any child to read ,
to end up like this , chasing memory that won’t let go ,and return over and over again , as the worldly child knows better . They do not care, and bet they swear, know , any knowledge of you ...at all .

Maureen's partially-hidden message to her dad, reminds me of the Player's Cigarettes-style portrait of a sailor that was discovered on a bedroom floor of our new home during the early 50s, by my brother. Its image can still be seen but, unfortunately, had since been strengthened with biro, and then added-to until it gave the impression of being the front cover of an upright partially-opened book. Arr!, or should that be Grr!

Veronica I used to go to the private baths as well..if I recall rightly it was sixpence,I can still see in my minds eye the white tiled walls and those ugly baths which are in fashion now,I do not like them,in fact I get the shudders when I see those free standing baths.I don't go Swimmimg anymore..no one to go with.hubby doesn't swim.

What's that 'saying'? … it's something on the lines of: One eye on the past - then you're blind in one eye, but if you forget the past - then you're blind in both eyes.

Raymond's 'Ma' with smiling face, adjoins its corners, wide
And then she turns a burnished key, to clear the 'cloth outside.

Raymond's 'Ma' soon palms it down, maintaining Irish pleat
And tells her son of raging seas, and sabbath's sockeye treat.

Agree Philip - none of us would be who or what we are without our roots and memories and what's more there wouldn't be a future without the past - to it put simply!

Reality lasts a second. Everything else is memory. Learning and knowledge is memory. Even a baby lives in the past. It is inevitably the main part of human experience.
And what a line that is: Raging seas and Sabbath's sockeye treat.. Magnificent. Magnificent.

Veronica I used to go to the private baths as well..if I recall rightly it was sixpence,I can still see in my minds eye the white tiled walls and those ugly baths which are in fashion now,I do not like them,in fact I get the shudders when I see those free standing baths.I don't go Swimmimg anymore..no one to go with.hubby doesn't swim.

Maureen you could still go swimming - Hubby could sit and watch you and read the paper. I believe there is a cafe at the new baths in Wigan. We don't have that luxury where I live.

Things are getting better Maureen, at lease the delay between repeats is getting a bit longer.

DTease ,you are awful....but I like you.

So, the people in the photo are my great-grandmother Frances. My grandfather is in the background, and my Grandmother is taking the picture. The man on the right, is my grandmother’s stepfather, Jack Pye.

I believe my grandmother Eileen grew up in the Poolstock area of Wigan. She was a phenomenal singer, so music would have definitely been a staple of their everyday environment,