Dear photograph…

A friend of mine posted a link on Facebook the other day that takes you back in time to the past. When I went there to take a look I was struck by the poignancy of what I saw. What a simple, yet fantastic idea. I wish I’d thought of it.

It show photographs of people holding old photographs of events and places over the original place the photograph of the event was taken. They hold their cherished prints so that the past is superimposed over the present, bringing the past into the present and merging them in a single timeless image.

Almost time travel really.

Well, you know me I just have to try these things, so I rushed to the place where we keep our old fashioned paper photographs and dug out one that I thought might work. This is a picture of the play bus we hired for Holly’s fifth birthday. It’s parked up outside of our house on the seventeenth of July, 1999 - almost twelve years ago.

I’d almost forgotten all about it. So good when something prompts you to remember, even better when the memories are happy ones.

As you can see the original paving-slabbed pavement has been vandalised since the picture was taken, replaced with horrible black tarmac when the road was dug up to repair the main drains and widened slightly. The tree that used to overhang the pavement (causing you to have to step onto the road sometimes) has been cut back and (although you can’t see it) the house to the right of the bus in the original picture now boasts a brand new enclosed porch. Apart from that though, things in the road are pretty much the same. People have come and gone, but the same grumpy old men still grump up and down it - and these days I’ve joined their ranks. The toddlers that once were are now six feet tall and driving cars, and the cars themselves are flashier, more streamlined and electric windows are the norm, not a luxury. But it’s still the same old road, the road that it’s been for the last hundred years or so.

Standing in exactly the same spot I’d stood all those years ago with my throw-away camera, I struggled to hold up the picture with one hand whilst juggling my Lumix with the other.

CLICK!

Well, not too bad for a first attempt.

And then like some older, less attractive, suburban, Dr. Who I was back to that day travelling through time to the past as the memories flooded in.

Small people everywhere, dressed in frilly skirts and shorts, feather boas and glitter masks, running up and down the road, screaming and laughing as they waited for the bus to arrive.

“It’s here, it’s here!” I heard them shout - and it was as Rumbletum’s Partybus drove over the cones I’d borrowed to keep the space outside free, squashing them flat as that proverbial fart.

“Sorry about that.” The driver smiled.

I wanted to smell his breath but didn’t dare, besides the little darlings were already piling onto the bus, pushing and shoving and pulling hair to be first up the stairs to the party games.

“Slow down, slow down.” The party hostess hissed from between clenched teeth. But of course they didn’t and one little girl was pushed back down the stairs where she lay, a crumpled heap of purple taffeta, spread-eagled on the floor at the bottom of the walkway. Needles to say she screeched for her mummy, who rushed onto the bus, scooped up her oscar-winning performance darling and carried her off to the car never to be seen again.

But apart from that (and the squabble that broke out between two waiting mothers who drank too much wine, the broken chair, the badly grazed knees, the child who was petrified of balloons and had to be slapped to stop her screaming, and that mysterious white dog who ran on to the bus and snatched most of the sausage rolls) the day went very well.

So take a look at some other time traveller’s pictures. Perhaps it may inspire you to make your own. I know that I’ll try this again and when I do I’m sure that I’ll share it with you.

Just click on the link below.

Dearphotograph