the way we were

I Just watched a TV programme on BBC about genealogy. During the last number of weeks they have had well known people tracing back through their family tree. Tonight they had the actor Stephen Fry who traced his family on his mother’s side back to Slovakia. Being European Jews, living where they lived in the last century, it was no surprise to find that members of his family perished in the concentration camps. No surprise but raw every time it is revealed again. I went to the BBC web site to find out a bit more about the programme and found they have a section of the site showing people’s family photos, with an open invite to anyone to send in JPEGs. Here’s the link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/your_history/your_photos/ Browsing the photos I came across a photo of a woman taken in Suffolk in 1955. Ester Everitt in her sweet shop.

With this description: “An interior view of an old fashioned sweetshop, showing the owner (my grandmother) Esther Everitt in the mid 1950s. The shop sold a large selection of wrapped and loose sweets which were sold by weight, usually weighed in 2oz or 4oz paper bags. Alongside the open boxes of sweets, chicken feed, corn and meal were also sold, sometimes making the sweets a little dusty at times, but I lived to tell the tale having had many free samples in my time. A black manx cat always sat on the doorstep. The shop closed in the late 1950s.” The photo was send in by C Everitt.