The good old days

Not a day for wandering around the streets with a camera, or wandering anywhere with anything. Looking out of the window, the drizzle is drifting across the treescape like a gauze curtain! The old year is fading away without a sound.

Where has the last year gone? Where has the last half century gone, for that matter! This morning my brother sent me a picture taken by our grandfather over 50 years ago. He had found it in a slide box and scanned it. It was taken in grandfather’s removals yard in Henley-on-Thames - he ran his late father’s furniture company in the town.

I remember the day well. After leaving school I had worked in the Surtax Office for a year, but when my friend Jim - on the left in the picture - offered me a job in his gardening company I jumped at the chance. He had no gardening knowledge, though that didn’t stop him, and we maintained private gardens and worked on paving and landscaping contracts. Jim decided to give the company a name and so one day we set about decorating his Mini pickup with ‘Woodland Landscape Contractors’! It sounded good at least and my time working with Jim gave me my life-long interest in gardening!

Around this time Jim was to get married and one day we drove down to Henley for him to pick up some furniture from my grandfather’s shop. I remember the day well. He parked outside the shop, opened his door and hit a car driving down the road. The other driver jumped out, asked ‘What’s the score?’, had a look, had a laugh, jumped in and drove off! Just another scratch, I suppose.

On the left is one of the furniture stores, which replaced an old timber and asbestos building where a friend and I used to play, clambering over and under the customers’ furniture. I wonder if they ever noticed!

Times change and life moves on, though I remember that day as if it was yesterday. The yard is now part of a housing development called Wilkins Court, Jim has passed on, I’m retired. Let’s hope for a better year ahead for all of us!