My tribute to SparkyMarkie

My day has been overshadowed by the news this morning that SparkyMarkie had quit after his Blip was taken down again. I never saw the image in question but I gather that it was reported for breaking the rules, not for the first time,  and he decided he'd had enough. I hope his absence will be only a temporary one because he was one of the most original contributors here and his blips were always inventive, creative and off-the-wall.

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to experiment with a technique of which Sparky is evidently a master: using an old photograph in a present-day  location to make a comparison. The first thing I found was - it's bloody hard!  You have to deduce the point from which the original was taken and try to hold it up in such a way as to match it with the surroundings, AND take the new image so as to include both. Then I discovered that my  camera couldn't manage to get both the photo and  the background in focus. Oh well, the spirit was willing if the technology was weak.

So. What you see here is a view of our house and farmyard taken in, I should think, the late 40s/early 50s when this was a large mixed farm belonging to a local family. How I came by the photo is interesting. Some years ago,  a posh car drew up outside and when no one got out I went to see who it was. A man and a youth were sitting there talking.  When I asked if I could help, the man (he was middle-aged, expensively-dressed and seemed to be American) got out and, pointing dramatically at an upstairs window, announced: I was born in that room! (around 1940 I think). He'd come to show his grandson the place. It had been his grandparents' farm, to which his mother had returned to give birth to both her sons. This one had emigrated to the USA and done very well for himself, to the extent that he now had a string of race horses in Texas. His brother had also gone overseas, working as a colonial adminstator in Africa, but had retired locally. He it was who subsequently brought me his family photograph album, stuffed with pictures of their childhood holidays at the farm. I copied as many as I could but later found that this one must have dropped out.. I didn't give it back because I liked the idea of having one original and I knew there were dozens more much the same.

In the original photo one of the little boys is perched on a cow (with horns!) who has been given something in a bucket to keep her still. His father, or an uncle perhaps, is keeping the animal steady while another farm worker is holding the old-fashioned milking apparatus. These outbuildings are just the same today although the farmyard, muddy here, was turfed over at a later date. No cows reside here now.

The house looks very different from the way we found it, although structurally it is unchanged.  The limewashed render that covered the stonework was removed in an effort to gentrify its appearance, and the sash windows were regrettably replaced with new ones much less in keeping. Today, there are far more large trees all round,  and the modern car is in sharp contrast to the old one.

My thanks go to SparkyMarkie for  inspiring this image (this one's for you Sparky!)  There are many more similar examples to be found here.

[Edit. As I understand it, it wasn't one of these pictures that broke the rules but something with superimposed graphics.]