Nikki-ann

We have a couple of boxes of old family photos. We don’t know who some of the people are in the photos, but others provide small windows in to the lives of ancestors.

The photo on the right is one I scanned in on Sunday afternoon. It shows my Great Grandparents stood outside their home on the Shropshire/Cheshire border. It helps show how my Grandparents lived. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that the house has long gone so I can’t see what it looks like today. However, the cottage they moved into in their later years still stands and looks a lot like it did back in their day.

The photo needed a bit of a tidy-up. It was under-exposed and torn around the edges. So I cropped it down and use a couple of different adjustments (in Photoshop CS3) including Brightness/Contrast and Exposure.

Other items I scanned on Sunday included a couple of family wedding photos, my Great Great Grandmother Mary Jane’s obituary and a wedding notice for a Great Great Aunt.

I really need to set aside more time to sit and scan more photos. Something which might help with this is the Spring Break Scan-a-Thon (29th March - 6th April) and the next Scanfest on 30th March (as mentioned by Miriam at Ancestories). I think I should mark those dates in my diary and maybe I’ll get through some of those photos.

On Friday I experienced a totally different camera to those that I use in my daily life. This camera was long & thin and……. (excuse me while I pause to gag!)… slid down my throat and all the way down to my duodenum. Yes, I had an endoscopy. I’ve still got a bit of a dry throat and I’m still tired. I don’t know if the tiredness has anything to do with the sedation, because I’m sure I wasn’t this tired when I was previously sedated.

I gag at the meer thought of having a camera down my throat, so I asked the nurse if being totally knocked out would be a possibility. No, sedation would be enough, apparently. After signing a form or two and being asked if I was nervous (who wouldn’t be?!), I was led to a waiting area where I quietly began to panic. I just knew I would gag, why wouldn’t they knock me out?!

Another nurse came to take me to the treatment room (or whatever they call it). I climbed onto the trolley and they hooked me up with some oxygen and the clip on my finger to check my pulse. They then put the sedation line in, at which point I remember telling them not to hold back on that stuff (I hope I didn’t come across as a druggy - I was just panicking that I was going to gag). Next up was the “banana spray” (it tastes like banana cordial that hasn’t been diluted) which numbed my throat (quite an odd sensation!).

Then came the mouth-guard… They’d hardly put it in and I was gagging! I don’t know whether the sedation was starting to kick in or what, but they managed to get the mouth-guard in and then start with the camera. My memory is a little hazy from then on in. I do remember the Doctor saying where the camera had reached at certain points, but I don’t remember swallowing it or it coming out (thankfully!).

The next thing I knew I was being wheeled into the recovery room, still hooked up to oxygen, the pulse monitor and a blood pressure monitor. Sometime later I was discharged into my Dad’s care where I gulped down water and went in search of food!

All in all, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Still, it’s not something I’ll be having again in a hurry.

This evening I’m trying to date a family photography. Sadly, the photo isn’t in great condition; it’s overexposed and scratched. It’s also warped slightly, so I had to take a photo of it rather than use the scanner. The photo is sepia and is mounted onto thick card. I turned it into greyscale and fiddled about with a few settings to try and get a bit more detail.

Is this a wedding photo? The male members of the family are wearing flowers. Alfred & Mary (the couple sat down) were married on October 1897, so that is certainly the earliest date for the photo. I’m confident that the people standing behind Alfred & Mary are Alfred’s children (Mary was Alfred’s second wife).

Alfred’s children from his first marriage were Margaret (born 1871), Mary (1873), Thomas (1875), Henry (1877), Martha (1882), Francis (1884), Maud (1886), May (1889) and Mabel (1893).

At the time of their marriage Mary had one daugher, Sarah (born 1895).

Once married, Alfred & Mary had 2 more children, John (born 1898) and Muriel (1903).

I am sure the 2 men stood are Henry and Thomas. I don’t think Francis was in the photo as he ended his short life in an asylum. If the photo is Alfred & Mary’s wedding photo then one of the infants would almost certainly have been Mary’s daughter Sarah. Dad thinks the 3rd woman on the left is Alfred’s daughter Mary.

I believe the photo was taken in Alfred & Mary’s garden as we have a couple of other photos situated in the same place.

The rain finally held off today, so I took the opportunity to go for a drive and take some photos. I ended up at Borth & Ynyslas (about an hour away from home).

It was cold and windy, but that didn’t stop some people enjoying the beach. One family braved putting their feet in the old Irish Sea water, while others were flying kites (perfect weather for it!).

(Click to enlarge)

Look who I bumped into today! OK, maybe not bumped in to… more like queued for over 2 hours on a cold & windy high street in Birmingham. I looked extremely windswept and the lovely John Barrowman looked perfect!

JB was only supposed to be signing books for an hour, but I’m guessing he stayed a bit longer (depending on his schedule) as the queue stretched right down the High Street.

I took this photo (click to enlarge) while I was in the queue. A couple of police officers had come in and he asked if he was in trouble. It turns out the male police officer just wanted to take JB’s photo!

When it was my turn I had my photo taken with JB (which turned out awful - I was windswept and the Waterstone’s staff member who took the photo had obviously never used a digital camera before), my book personally signed and a smile, then I was off. Happy as Larry.

JB’s autobiography Anything Goes has jumped the queue and is now next on my pile of books to read. I’m currently half-way through Gary Barlow’s autobiography My Take (the updated paperback version), which is very interesting so far. I’ve also got Richard Hammond’s account of his life before & after his terrifying high-speed car crash while filming for Top Gear - On The Edge - waiting to be read, as well as one or two other books.

I’ve treated myself to a mini photo studio. It includes a lighting tent (40cm x 40cm x 40cm), 4 colour backgrounds (white, black, red & blue), lights and stands. The tent folds into a carry case and everything else fits in the pockets on the front. It’s only small, but it’ll do the job I want it to do.

When I got it out of the box the day it arrived Leo (the cat) had other ideas. I think he thought it was a cat tent because he marched straight up and sat in it. It’s just the right size for him too! Unfortunately, my camera wasn’t too hand at the time.

So this afternoon I did a bit of product photography.

(Click on the thumbnails to enlarge)

The pewter pig belonged to my Great Auntie Polly. It was used for carrying matches and it has a bit on its base to strike the matches. Unfortunately, it’s missing its tail and ring through its nose.

This

This might be worth checking out. Tin Man (you may recognise the character’s name from The Wizard of Oz) is a new mini-series about to be shown on the Sci Fi Channel in the US. After spending time looking around the website, I’m hoping it comes to the Sci Fi Channel (or any other channel) in the UK. It looks to be a lot darker than the original book/film, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to sing “We’re off to see the wizard….”!

A colleague recently went to see Wicked the musical in London and has been raving about it, so I’ve got a bit of a feeling for all things Oz at the moment. I’d love to see Wicked and from what I’ve seen and heard, it’s well worth going to see.

That

I’ve been looking through the 100+ photos I took at Take That’s concert on the 17th and decided to upload two or three more.

The rest can be found over at Flickr and here.

What a great weekend this is turning out to be! Yesterday I went to see Take That at Birmingham NEC and today it’s snowing! It’s been snowing for a couple of hours now. It isn’t sticking to the roads at the moment, but it is starting to stick to the roofs, cars and fields.

So, last night… was amazing! Take That just keep getting better and better. They’ve always put on a good show, but they always manage to out-do themselves.

Take That had 2 support acts last night, the first of which was Brown:Music. They’re a talented band and certainly worth checking out (Tash is Jason’s vocal coach). The second support act was Sophie Ellis Bextor. As Sophie is already a well established artist it’s quite surprising to see her as a support act, but she was certainly welcomed. If only we could all carry off the dress she was wearing!

I had a brilliant seat (Block A Row G) made even better by the shape of the stage, but even those sat near the back had a great view because once again Take That had a ‘B’ stage in the middle of the arena. Those in aisle seats had it even better… Take That walked from the ‘B’ stage to the main stage through the crowd. They obviously didn’t mind being groped when they did it last year!

Take That certainly put on a show. They had plenty of dancers (including Gary’s wife, Dawn), flames (they even set fire to various parts of themselves - covered in fire-proof clothing, of course), and sang old songs as well as new. They just keep getting better and better!

I took plenty of photos (of course), so I’ve picked out the best and uploaded them to Flickr.