Their lives in a box

I have a shoe box containing all the photographs my parents took, from when they got engaged in 1922 until around 1956. Contact prints were so small in those days - (2-1/2 by 1-1/2 inches) - that it's not such a squeeze as you might imagine. I have dipped into these over the years, but now I have set myself the task of going through them systematically and scanning all the good ones into my computer.

I thought there would be good curiosity value in the pictures of the 1920s fashions, but I am finding something more profound happening as I immerse myself in the past. It is as though I am actually living alongside my parents, in a way that never seemed to happen even when they talked about their younger days, and I feel that I am beginning to know them better.

In the beginning were the loving shots taken of each other, having fun and showing off. When I realised I had got to the honeymoon pictures, three years after the engagement, I wanted to know where they were taken. On the folder was the name of the photographer and the town of Bognor. There was one snap of The Royal Hotel, and I was able to find it on the web, still recognisably the same now, 80 years later. Time stood still.

Note the 1925 swimsuits, both of them giving full body coverage! Soon after this, as all parents will understand, the pictures became filled with images of me, and later of my brother, and the pictures of each other became rarer, as the demands of family life took over. But their hearts didn't change, and in 1952 I took this picture of them together, still loving, as they remained to the end.