Granny's Photo Stash 8

[poliphilo]

This one's a bit miscellaneous. I'm posting it simply because it's so atmospheric.

The people are my great uncle Charles Randle Jackson (my grandmother's brother- always known as Uncle Ran) and his wife- and they're punting on the lake at Suffolk House, the Jackson family home outside Croydon. Not that the place matters, really. It could be the Norfolk Broads, it could be the River Cam. Punting- such a quintessentially early 20th century middle-class pastime.

Randle served in the Great War, and survived to pursue a not in the least bit celebrated career as a painter and sculptor. I met him in the 1950s when he came to our house in Croydon with a very much younger second wife. I don't think he was married when he went to war so I suppose this picture dates from the 1920s. Did my grandmother take it? Probably.

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[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We just showed her an album of her German holiday in 1937. She remembered nothing- until we got to the bit right at the end where they were visiting the zoo at Rotterdam and her father had made a note that she'd taken a picture of some lion cubs. "Oh, yes," she said. "They let us into the cage to play with them."

She's always been an animal lover.