Now I always feel privileged when I am entrusted with a set of old family photographs not least because there is always a story behind them.
This is one from the collection of Ken Fisher and it’s got the lot.
I am not sure exactly when it was taken or where but it just draws you in.
The smiling woman in the centre with the bag is Ken’s grandmother and the chap holding the bike is her husband.
It is one of the impromptu snaps which wasn’t planned, was over in a second but in that short space of time the photographer t has caught the moment.
A few people pose for the camera but others including Mrs Fisher seem almost oblivious to its presence.
There are a fair few people in their Sunday best and I particularly like the man on our left who seems more interested in the woman on the bike than he is about having his picture taken, while the young lad outside the shop has either not clocked what is going on or is too cool to let on.
It is the sort of scene which will have been replicated all over the country on those sunny Sundays when everyone came out on to streets with a few hours to spare and the moment allowed you savour what the Italians describe as the “the sweetness of doing nothing”*
Now that might seem to be stretching it after all this is Manchester and not some small walled Italian town in Tuscany, added to which whatever was happening at this moment in time, the women at least in the picture will have had a busy morning, preparing and cooking the dinner, and keeping up with some housework.
Mrs Fisher had been born in 1887, married James Fisher in 1908 and was a widow by the time she was twenty-eight. Private Fisher had been killed in 1915 at the Battle of Ypres. They had lived on Moon Street in Rusholme where she continued to live till she moved in with her son in 1967.
Along with this picture Ken has lent a collection of other family photographs, many of them taken on holiday in Blackpool and each has a story.
And that just leaves me to reflect that we will all have a collection tucked away in a cupboard or up in the attic.and yet here will by a set of stories and a shed load of history all of which is worth telling.
Many will not have seen the light of days for decades.
If like us you have never added a name or a date they will baffle a future generation.
And so that said I am off to find the pictures and where I can add some detail.
Location; Manchester
Picture; Mrs Fisher, date unknown from the collection of Ken Fisher
* Dolce far niente, “the sweetness of doing nothing”
I am not sure exactly when it was taken or where but it just draws you in.
The smiling woman in the centre with the bag is Ken’s grandmother and the chap holding the bike is her husband.
It is one of the impromptu snaps which wasn’t planned, was over in a second but in that short space of time the photographer t has caught the moment.
There are a fair few people in their Sunday best and I particularly like the man on our left who seems more interested in the woman on the bike than he is about having his picture taken, while the young lad outside the shop has either not clocked what is going on or is too cool to let on.
It is the sort of scene which will have been replicated all over the country on those sunny Sundays when everyone came out on to streets with a few hours to spare and the moment allowed you savour what the Italians describe as the “the sweetness of doing nothing”*
Mrs Fisher had been born in 1887, married James Fisher in 1908 and was a widow by the time she was twenty-eight. Private Fisher had been killed in 1915 at the Battle of Ypres. They had lived on Moon Street in Rusholme where she continued to live till she moved in with her son in 1967.
Along with this picture Ken has lent a collection of other family photographs, many of them taken on holiday in Blackpool and each has a story.
And that just leaves me to reflect that we will all have a collection tucked away in a cupboard or up in the attic.and yet here will by a set of stories and a shed load of history all of which is worth telling.
If like us you have never added a name or a date they will baffle a future generation.
And so that said I am off to find the pictures and where I can add some detail.
Location; Manchester
Picture; Mrs Fisher, date unknown from the collection of Ken Fisher
* Dolce far niente, “the sweetness of doing nothing”
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