Talking pictures
I SAID I would be a better blogger in a previous post and I have sat here going 'hmm maybe I could write about...' 'or maybe I could write about...' - nothing has gone beyond the first sentence. Just as I was about to sign off I thought I might explain the photo I use as my icon. So here goes.
I love this picture, obviously which is why I use it (it is cropped a little). It invokes so much for me. I remember the dress I was wearing, the colours and patterns on it, I also remember I had many outfits like that. I remember the day the picture were taken, I remember the car. Does it sound ridiculous but I can see me in the capture of the child in the picture despite the fact I am four or five years old when the pic was taken. I also love the way my shoes look like they are on the wrong feet, you can't beat the 1970s with a big stick.
It was the second picture in a series of two showing me with one of my brothers in front of the car. The first picture is a typical family kid's portrait of the two of us grinning wearing mad 1970s outfits standing in front of a swanky car and the second is the one I have used to represent me in the blogosphere.
I have somehow mislaid the pics thought I know they are in this flat somewhere and I want to have them framed together - they'll look great.
The pix were taken in the lower Falls in Belfast on Cyprus Street outside my grandparent's house with St Peter's primary school in the background where my Daddy and his siblings went to school. I often remember staying overnight there and not being able to sleep because of the music coming from the teen disco they would run at weekends during the 1970s.
That street, Cyprus Street, where Gerry Conlon one of the Guildford 4 also grew up, is now gone, along with St Peter's School and most of the streets that made up the lower Falls Road.
The streetscape, and much more, of the lower Falls began to change in the 1980s; all the terrace houses built for the mill workers are mostly gone except in small pockets here and there.
Taken during the mid 1990s at Clonard, lower Falls when whole rows of terrace housing was levelled to make way for new housing
This next pic is for Tawdrey and shows another loss - the Glen Road cottages.
Knocked down in the mid 1990s
While things have certainly been gained, a lot has been lost, but sure isn't that change.
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6 comments:
I've often wondered about your icon photo--if it was just a cool photo or if there was a story behind it. I love the little outfit! (from what I can see of it). The other photos are great as well :)
Hi, just curious if Cypress Street is close to Van Morrison's Cypress Avenue?
Thanks for the lovely comment Angelina, much appreciated! Hope the story fulfilled itself.
Conan: It is actually Cyprus Street off Leeson Street on the Lower Falls Road in west Belfast, Van crooned beautifully about Cypress Avenue which is off the Ormeau Road, the other side of town.
Van's Crypress is across from the bakery, the Ormeau Bakery (is the bread Ormeau? - Northerners will get that!) he mentions in Cleaning Windows 'the smell of the bakery across the street...'.
So weird...I am sure my dad went to St. Peter's.
interesting read. I myself used to live in Cyprus Street, many years ago. We lived across the road from the Conlon's
It's a great picture. I remember having shoes like that too and I'm sure mine often were worn on the wrong feet! That picture genuinely evokes a lot of warm fuzzy feelings for me of my childhood and my Dad taking MILLIONS of pictures of us.
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