My Grandmother the Camera Bandit

I was at my parent's house the other night for dinner and I decided to go through some pictures they have in various boxes looking for some nice shots of our long dead family dog. I want to do a write up about him and thought a few cute pics of the ol' furball would be nice. So of course, this giant mess of Kodak hell, pre-digital duh, resembles a photo graveyard. As I'm going through this tornado of photos I'm thinking, "when they (parents) kick the bucket, I have to organize all this, cuz this mess is nasty".

There were photos randomly strewn everywhere, in no particular order, ranging from my mother's childhood in India, my birthday parties, visits to Scotland, the pooch of course, my children (obviously)...

...and a number that were taken by my Grandmother, God bless her, I miss her.

My Grandmother lived a somewhat privileged life, travelling the world with my Grandfather. My Grandfather doted on her and would do anything for her. However, I would compare my Grandmother's use of a camera somewhat how I would compare my own mother's modern day take on the Internet, her email, and a computer - "My invisible Internet lines keep breaking when I have my bedroom window open and wind comes in and blows the Internet waves" (she actually said this when I was looking for a picture, I'm not kidding - luv you mummy) - you get it.

So to prove my point (love ya Grannie, miss ya, mean it), here are a few pictures she took that I was able to scan. See for yourself a rookie photographer at work:

This is a picture of a window at my Grandparent's house in Scotland. The people in the lower left hand corner are me the little one, and my part of Great Aunt.

This next shot is of the same window at a different angle. The foot peaking out of the left hand corner is mine.

You could argue that she was taking pictures of her windows and I just happened to get in the way...but I'm pretty sure she was trying to get a cute shot of her first grandchild....pretty certain!

Here's one in North Vancouver after we moved from the UK and my Grandparents were visiting. This is a picture of a brick wall, a plastic scooter, part of a tricycle, and not sure if you can see, but if there's a hand on the left hand side, it's mine posing with my tricycle.

Again, taking a picture of wall and surrounding apartments? Probably not. She wants to take a picture of her grandchild back to Scotland with her to show the relatives. I can only imagine the photo developer's reaction when these babies were processing.

And this beauty here is the camera bandit herself, my Grandmother, as a child. Probably 1920-1930 or so. She certainly was a looker. I think she works better in front of the camera, don't you?

My next post will be about the dog. He was a cutie also.