Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Birmingham

I just had a sudden urge to scan one of my old family photos last night and chose this one, taken many decades ago by my Father, of my Mother and little me : ) I'm not sure, but it looks like I may have been sitting in the child's seat on the back of my Father's bike. I only remember seeing photos of me on my Father's bike, and I don't know if those old seats were movable to a different bike. So often at weekends, my parents and I would bike into the countryside around Birmingham, England, and my Mother would look for wildflowers, which she loved, and my Father would be taking photos - photography was a passion for him. I seem to have inherited both passions, for which I am truly grateful : ) My Mother died in December 1998 and my Father had died many years before that, in 1976. Sadly, our main communication for decades was by letter, as I got married at 22 (far too young!) and moved overseas, usually across the other side of the world. Missed out on family talks and sharing of my parents' lives. Very sad, but it happens to many people when family members move away. Oh, by the way, those curls were the curse of my life, ha, ha - just hated them!

This object has been a puzzle for more than two years, lol! This photo was taken by my friend, Eric Brown, who lives in England and knew my Brother. He and his wife, Anne, were two of the friends who went through my Brother's house in such meticulous detail after John died, saving everything of interest and importance, including a huge amount of paper documents and photos. When they had completed this enormous task, they made sure that everything was packed carefully in 12 boxes and shipped over to me here in Calgary. This object, actually, is not something I asked to be sent, even though I found it fascinating. It is quite large and probably heavy - it looks like it was photographed on an ottoman/stool. Since then, Eric has been searching for an answer to "What is it?", but has not yet been able to solve the mystery. We are hoping that someone might just know or be able to make a suggestion. A long-time friend of Eric's did tell him what he thought it was used for, but I won't add that till later.

That's me on the left, with my younger friend, Linda, who grew up into an amazing woman and an even more amazing friend. This is the person (over in England) who arranged my brother's funeral just over a year ago, helped sort through every single item in his house and sent me photos of each thing by e-mail so that I could choose which precious items I wanted saving. All these things were carefully shipped over to Canada for me a few months ago. She, and my other friends, gave up a year of their lives to do all this - and many other things, too numerous to mention. Thanks, Linda - how proud your parents would be, to have raised a daughter like you!

This photo did not scan well, to put it mildly - will have to see if taking a photo of this old photo of my parents works better! This was one of many photos that were in an album that had been given to my father by the company from which he was retiring. One of the many albums that were shipped over to me two or three months ago. My father was Tom Carden Bassindale (1907-1976) and my mother was Vera Kathleen Bassindale (nee Neal).

I came across this scan that I made ages ago and sent it to my daughters a few days ago. Last night, I decided that I would upload it to Flickr to give you all a little smile and chuckle. My eyes are blue, by the way, not rather green like they look in this very, very old photo : ) I was told many years later that I was very lucky to have a colour photo of myself, as colour photography was just becoming available when I was around three years old, and my father must have been one of the first to use it. I still remember all those decorations, though I haven't seen them for dozens of years. Happy Christmas, everyone!