THE FAMILY – Candidate Posters

Voting day again and I have recently come across the posters from dads progressive candidacy days… I am fascinated by everything about these, from the print makers information to the feel of the paper, the quality of the print and the colour of the font. I can imagine them being churned off a huge machine.

THE FAMILY - 7th May... Election Day

Thursday 7th May.... Yes, voting day... Yes, cast your vote for my dad Dave Thompson... Oh that was  1970! 

THE FAMILY - 1980's photos

Wowsers! Just came across this photo when sorting through some stuff... all I can say in my defence is it was the 1980's and I was a teenager. I'm trying to work out how old I am here (I think I'm about 15). Maybe I should try backcombing my hair again! I remember Shockwaves hairspray used to feature highly in my regime.

THE FAMILY - York Minster Donation

Sorting through some of the family 'treasure' we came across this A3 poster recording the appreciation and gratitude of my Fathers donation to York Minster. Generous dad helped with the upkeep for a full minute... Blimey! I remember this trip as we all made some brass rubbings whilst we were there, that memory has vividly stuck with me all these years, I was nearly seven years old at the time. To this day I still find myself making random rubbings with a piece of gold heel ball which we got from this very trip on the 1st April 1980 (before the fire in 1984).

THE FAMILY - Arthur Boy Burke Armstrong

My Grandfather - Arthur Armstrong. a.k.a Boy Burke

Been researching Victorian cabinet cards on the internet today, amongst the ones I've come across there have been some great images of wrestlers and boxers. With last months boxing bout still fresh in my mind, I started thinking about my Grandfather, who was a boxer in the 1930's. I know very little about him other than his boxing name was Boy Burke and then Arthur Burke as apparently there was an issue with him calling himself boy. I don't know the history behind him calling himself Burke as he was an Armstrong, he was an Arthur however! My Uncle Al had a collection of all his fight posters but these were lent out for an exhibition years ago and never returned. That's about all I know of my Grandfather, other than he disappeared when my mother was a child, my Gran used to say that he fell off the Tyne bridge one night, there were rumours that he ran off to start a new life somewhere else. I guess we'll never know what happened to him and if there's more of his story to unfold.

THE FAMILY - Chloe's Dishes

Trying to sort my laptop into some order and back up my files before it gives up the ghost. I've been trawling through tons of old photographs, I'll probably end up posting quite a few over the coming weeks and months. Here's one for today, this was the very spoilt family cat's feeding hole. I couldn't believe how many dishes my mum and sister had booby trapped the kitchen with. Sadly the old dear passed away at the beginning of the year, I miss the random collections which accrued in this area.

THE FAMILY - Inheritance, the family ceramics

Been spending a couple of days this week with my sisters trying to sort out some space in our storage area of potential inheritance. We seem to have a rather large collection of delightful Royal Doulton Ceramics... although maybe not the type most would imagine! One of the parents many business ventures was a builders merchants in the 1970's... this lasted a few years (until the business partner ran off with all the money), we were left with all the stock which we seem to have lovingly never parted with since! There were some fab colours in 1970's bathroom ware (maybe not the avocado however)... I love these pedestals although my sisters nearly killed me when I piped up that I would like to keep them to use in some sort of installation someday...

1970's sink pedestals.

Small section of sinks.

Small section of the 1970's cisterns & Pans.