Memories and Socially Distanced Walk #R2BC

How does Thursday get here so quickly? It means it's time for the happiest linky around. I hope you all enjoy reading the other posts. For anyone new to the linky we have a few relaxed instructions:
What do you have to do? Simple:

1. Link up a post about something that is making you happy or grateful. It can be a list, photos or any way you fancy

2. Add the #R2BC badge (at the end of this post) onto your post or blog so that people can easily find the linky and join in too if they want to

3. Share the love. This is the really important bit. Please don't just link and run, comment on at least a couple of posts and why not share with #R2BC too?

I'll stop by all linked up posts to comment and I'll share on social media too. Meanwhile here are my reasons to be cheerful for this week:

1) Remembering loved ones
I found more treasure whilst sorting through boxes. Lots of photographs of my granny when she was a child and young adult. I put them up with the photographs I had framed of my daughter last week:

I have since given the one of my gran with her little sister to my mum as she didn't have any of her mum as a child.

2) VE Day

My neighbours and I managed a socially distanced celebration for the 75th VE Day celebration. One even baked us lots of cakes:

3) Socially distanced walk

The new rules meant that after 7 weeks I could walk with my daughter, whilst maintaining the social distance rules:

#SilentSunday 20th November 2011

#TheGallery: An Inspirational Person

Tara has been inspired by hearing about inspirational mums to ask us who has inspired us. I haven't had a chance to really trawl through the family archives for this one but I'd like to show you all my 2x great grandmother Jane Kellett (nee Dewsbery):

Born in 1861 she was the youngest daughter of Theophilus Dewsbery who ran the Railway Hotel in Skelmersdale, Lancashire. She married at the age of 17 to Mark Kellett in 1879 (possibly due to the fact they had a child on the way!). He was an engine fitter in 1881 but at some point after her father's death in 1880 Jane and Mark took over the Railway Hotel.

In total they had 6 daughters and 1 son. Tragically their only son Mark died in an accident at home at the age of 10. Shortly after this Mark senior died at only 46 leaving Jane with 5 daughters still at home and a hotel to run. This was still an age when women's lib was a long way away and there was no state support.

The bar of the hotel was frequented by miners working in the coal mines nearby. Jane was very strict and would only let them buy a beer if they came in with clean hands and faces. This wasn't a hygiene issue but more a case of making sure they'd been home for a wash first and given their wives some of their pay!

Jane died in 1945 when my dad was too young to remember her. All I have is the memories of my Granny who told me the stories I have put in here. She sounds like an incredible woman doing well against the odds and was truly an inspiration. 

Birthday Retrospective

On Thursday this week it's my birthday and just in time for this my parents discovered a whole load of old photographs on my mum's computer which were scanned in from slides! So I can give you a little trip mostly through the 70s but a little bit of the 80s too:

Clockwise from top left:

• With my big brother and my cousin in the late 1970s
• Pushing my second cousin in I think the early 1980s
• Dressed for my school's Scottish Country Dancing team about 1978
• On my uncle's knee with my brother at my Granny's house 
• Celebrating my mum's Open University degree about 1979
• All of us in Clothkits on the beach in the mid 1970s
• With my teddy Sebastian in about 1977
• Dressing up with my cousin and brother in Huddersfield in the early 1970s

Some interesting hair styles and changes of fashion during that decade! I still have nice long legs just a shame they aren't as slim...

Hotpoint Family Portraits Competition

Sponsored Post


It's exciting to be asked to be one of the bloggers selected to help spread the word about Hotpoint's Family Portrait competition. As a keen amateur photographer its the kind of competition that I'm going to have a go at entering myself. The competition is to be held across the whole EU and they are hoping to collect photographs from a diverse range of European families.


The idea is to send in your best family picture(s) by the 10th of October 2011 to the competition website at http://family.hotpoint.eu. With a first prize of a family trip to New York this Christmas and a photo shoot with Steve McCurry. Here is a video of Steve explaining more about the competition:

The 100 finalists will be selected by a public online vote. A professional jury will then whittle this down to a shortlist of 10. The winner will then be chosen by Steve McCurry himself. 

So what are you waiting for get out there and snap your family and see if you can win... Im off to check the photographic archives to see what I can find! Maybe an improved version of something like this: