nostalgia

Norwich nostalgia

/ mikeosbornphoto / 15 Comments

It took just a two-hour train journey from London to be whisked back years. I lived in Norwich, an ancient and important city in eastern England, from 1992-9. It was both family home and the place where I studied at the University of East Anglia.

This time I was armed with my camera to see its crowning glory, the cathedral. My feet remembered where to go, from the pretty lanes including Elm Hill, and to lunch at an unchanged old haunt, The Waffle House. The banana milkshakes were still deliciously rich, and the same guy still works there.

The UEA’s campus, a bold cluster of concrete set beside a lake, couldn’t be more different from the ancient city centre. It felt nostalgically familiar, but the current students weren’t even born when I was one of them. Sometimes going back can be a bad idea, but this was a happy retread.

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The Photo Shop

Little magic carpets

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This is the story of some simple, everyday objects that have been part of my life for years. They’re not just items for decoration and practical use. Their very fibres are seeped in the memories of travels around eastern Europe. They’re precious things…

BULGARIA – 1990

Bulgaria 1990

This rich textile was bought on a trip to Bulgaria almost 25 years ago, as the country was emerging bleary-eyed from decades of socialism. A first solo visit to eastern Europe holds vivid memories. My friend Eva was unimpressed. “It smells of communism,” she said. To this day it is used as a tablecloth.

SLOVAKIA – 2006

Slovakia 2006

This cloth with its elegant apricot braiding was picked up in Bratislava. This was a hastily organised trip to mark the end of a long relationship, and the charms of the Slovak capital were lost on me. As it happens, this cloth is covering the table at the moment.

ROMANIA – 1991

Romania 1991

Romania has a special place in my soul, and this first visit was memorable and momentous. I remember buying this runner in the port city of Constanta, and it has spent years hanging on the walls of various homes, often guarding the front door. It’s starting to fade, but that eye-opening summer never diminishes.

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Folded up

The Photo Shop

Goodbye W6

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Ravenscourt Park

We’re leaving. Our time in this little corner of west London has been far too short. We were settled and happy but have to move on.

This place has been a surfeit of riches for photographic inspiration, from the very fabric of Brackenbury’s old houses, the pub on our doorstep and of course Ravenscourt Park, which I’ve captured through the seasons.

Actually, we’re not going far at all. It’s a change of postcode, not country, and no doubt we’ll pop back regularly. But you have to live and breathe a neighbourhood to feel part of its fabric.

Our new place in the world will no doubt provide fresh material for my camera lens. Until then, here’s a brief homage to this slither of London W6.

Gallery entrance

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A familiar place

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The village greenA recent return to Essex, the English county where I was born and grew up, provided a moment of recollection and nostalgia. My mother (pictured in the panoramic shot above) and I made a fleeting stop at the village of Writtle, the place where I used to live.

It’s a picturesque place, with a green circled by old houses, a pond edged with mature willow trees, with the squat tower of the parish church close by, where I was baptised at six months of age.

We moved away many years ago, but it is essentially unaltered. The memories remain locked in and seeped to the surface while we took a brief look. I took just a few photographs, quite probably for the first time.

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Gold banner

Photographic memory

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It looks like a photograph of some postcards carefully arranged on a table.

This simple image is much more than that – it evokes a great deal of memories, connections and nostalgia stretching back many years.

These colourful, exotic cards are the carefully preserved remains of a pastime that started in boyhood and had a huge influence on my life. I was a shortwave radio enthusiast, duelling with the ebb and flow of the airwaves to hear broadcasts from around the world.

When I heard these stations, I told them how good their signals were and was sent a verification card as a reward, known in radio circles as a QSL. Cards from Uzbekistan, Ghana and the United Arab Emirates are among those in the photo.

My passion grew over the years and flourished into travel abroad, work, meeting people from other countries and making some friends for life. But the unreliable radio waves eventually lost out to the internet and faded into obscurity.

Just a simple capture like this means so much. It’s said that old photographs are full of memories, but it’s possible to create new pictures to evoke the same emotions.

Are there any other shortwave enthusiasts out there? And has anyone taken a new photo to reconnect with the past?