A picture for every year: 1947 to 1961

I’ve been doing my best to pull together an archive of pictures of my life. It’s rather sparse and for some years I’ve been able to find nothing. However I’ve done what I can and these are from the first 15 calendar years, 1947 to 1961 when I became 14.

The photographs read from left to right and the first two are my early years in South Africa. I suspect that the one of me walking may be a little premature although my daughter Clare was walking just after her first birthday so maybe it’s not. The lady in picture number one is obviously my mother. Number three is of me on the deck of the SS City of Paris on which my mother and I returned from South Africa after her marriage fell apart.

I grew up in Connah’s Quay with frequent holidays in Llandudno and photo number four is me walking on the pier there with Uncle Colin, my mother’s brother, who probably filled some of the hole left by my father. In 1951 I started school (Dee Road Infants School) and that’s photograph number five.

Colin got married in 1952 and I was a page boy at the event (photograph six). Numbers seven and eight are more photographs in Llandudno: on the pier with Gareth Williams (left) and by the beach on the West Shore with my grandfather, Vicky, and mother. Photograph number nine is my eighth birthday. I’m back left and then the others are, I think, Stuart Walton, Ronnie Brown and Gareth Williams along the back and then in the front left to right are David Hall, David Norbury and Graham Bulman. I have met the two Davids several times recently.

The last photograph in the second row is of my class at Custom House Lane County Primary School and some of the same boys are there: Graham Bulman and Ronnie Brown in the back row and the two Davids at each end of the row in front. I’m fourth from left in that row.

1957, first photo in the bottom row, was the year of my great grandparents’ Diamond Wedding. I was the only great grandchild present with Vicky on the end of the third row and my mother in the centre and Nanny to the left of my great grandfather Edwards in the second row.

The next year is 1958 and there is no photograph. It was the year I started at Hawarden Grammar School which I remember had the motto Labor Omnia Vincit (work conquers all). Fortunately there’s a school photograph for 1959 and that’s me third from the left in the fourth row. Then there’s a first colour photograph of me with Gareth Williams (centre) and Gareth Hughes (right).

And finally: another photograph free year in 1961. That would be the year I turned 14 and started my fourth year at Hawarden.