Stephen*Iliffe's photostream  

One of my early memories, as a four or five year old, is accompanying Mum on a weekly routine to collect my "Auntie Nellie" - my great aunt, who was in her nineties - from the Home for the Blind and drive her home for Sunday dinner. It's a distant recall, but I do remember stepping through the front door, along a corridor and into a sitting room bedecked with floral curtains and upholstery where a group of residents were seated in a semi-circle.

So imagine my surprise and delight last week at coming across this photograph in an envelope. There she is, Ellen Flude Bloxam, on the far left, while to her right the Bishop of Leicester greets the residents during what appears to be a staged photo call for the local newspaper.

Ellen Flude Bloxam [1879-1973]
Leicester

My grandmother Rene at the wheel of my grandfather's car.

My grandpa Edward never took a driving license; when he learnt to drive in the pre-War era it wasn't mandatory, and a motorcycle license was sufficient to qualify one to drive the roads!

The number of car owners was tiny compared with today, and grandpa was a working class painter and decorator, but he had his own business and he saved prudently - long enough to buy this. It appears to be a Ford Model Y en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_Y [thanks to David Boakes for spotting this] the first of America's mass-produced cars made for sale abroad, for the princely sum of £100.

Cliftonville, Kent - c1935.

During the 1950s, as Britain finally emerged from the gloom of post-War austerity, and better times lay ahead, the working folk of Leicester headed en masse to the north Norfolk coast for their holidays - to Hunstanton, Cromer, Wells and Sheringham.

My grandpa's photograph of the family caravan - with my auntie Jane and her school friend Anne - captures the optimistic spirit of those holidays.

Hunstanton, Norfolk, mid-1950s

Two pedestrians stare vacantly into an empty shopwindow.

In the past eight years that I've passed this shopfront it has been a hardware, fashion and florist store. All have come and gone, and now it lies vacant, another sign of Britain's deepening recession.

Alderman's Hill, Palmers Green, London N13

One from the archives: While at Leicester Polytechnic studying graphic design in the 1980s, I'd often go down the road to take photos at the Welford Road stadium where my Dad and I were keen supporters of the Leicester Tigers - in the days when the game was still amateur and followed by 200 spectators and a dog.

In those days you could lean on the fence and get so close to the action you could smell the aroma of liniment on the players and see the sweat on their faces.

Leicester Tigers vs Saracens
Welford Road, c.1984