Gate guardians – Coltishall and Horsham.

Hidden history, Persistence of memory

This post is a short one, more of a response to this post and the photo which was found in a jumble sale in 2016 by Julie Chettleburgh. It contains a fabulous photo of a Spitfire on Farmer’s Avenue (above) which caused a flurry of excitement as everyone either...

Cambridge – persistence of memory

Persistence of memory, The Great War

My mum grew up here. Her and my ancestors were here for hundreds of years working as maids and cleaners, labourers, cartmen and brickies, laying the railways, further back pulling the root veg through the surface of the peaty soils to the north or tending beans and...

The workhorse and the charger

Persistence of memory

I lived in North Walsham as a kid. RAF Coltishall was only about 6 miles away. We all grew up with the Lightning; the cold-war emblems glossily belting past at high altitude, breaking the sound barrier with that window-rattling, deep, sonorous boom they are famed for....

9/11 – the years on

Guest writers, Persistence of memory

Guest post from Louisa Griffith-Jones. Sometimes you just stumble across a remarkable piece of writing. Louisa posted this earlier today. I read it standing at a bus-stop, a lump in my throat. She is a friend, someone I remember from gigs in the early 1980s at UEA...

On the beach: Utah

Persistence of memory

We’ve just been away. It didn’t take me very long to remember that I’m not very good at holidays. The vacancy of it all gets to me very quickly, I find it difficult to relax and conjure ‘fun’ up out of being somewhere just because...

Dear Dad…

Persistence of memory

I’ve resisted the urge to paint this incomplete picture for a while. But when I started writing this some months ago it would have been my dad’s birthday. This got me thinking about him and about how I’m heading towards the age he was when my mum had...

It’s beginning to and back again

Persistence of memory

We went to London. We do this journey quite often, from the East it is a fairly routine trip, a day out; one of those the ever shortening distances that only just hold us all apart. We have offspring who have set up shop there in the expense and dull glitter, the piss...

Approaching Nirvana

Music, Persistence of memory

Heroes are strange beasts, as is memory. Nirvana never were particularly the former for me, but are very much part of the latter. Retrospectively 25 years on almost to the day it’s still quite nice to know you were present at the stuttering birth of a new...

Vanishing Point: Rosebeke

Persistence of memory, Vanishing Points

A strange day. I’ve been working very loosely on an ongoing project called ‘Vanishing Points’ for a while. I’m a bit of a fan of VPs, lots of artists are as a way of leading the eye into compositions, focussing the viewers mind. Kubrick for...

What’s THIS for…!

Music, Persistence of memory

You might recognise this scene for two reasons; Firstly you live in Norwich and have walked down either Duke Street or Oak Street or have sauntered down this chopped off continuation of Colegate beside St Miles Church with it’s lovely flushwork and tracery....

Norwich Baedeker blitz: The Lockwoods

Persistence of memory, The Blitz

The Lockwood family lived on Rosebery Road in Norwich, number 65 a very ordinary little terrace in a row of terraces nestling in the sea of shoe factory workers houses between St Clements Hill and Angel Road, not far from Angel Road School. In the Picture above we...

Before the NHS…

Persistence of memory

I’ve microblogged before about this on Flickr using some family photos that belonged to my mother which you can see scattered about this page. The Health Service is quite important in our family, This was particularly true for my mother, who was involved from...