To me, there’s something of the late 1950’s about any image like this with ‘stripey light’ in it.

I was born in the middle of that decade. My parents were keen to escape the ‘factory streets’, and we moved out of the terraced housing of ‘old Bolton’ to a seemingly progressive village sitting on a hill halfway to Bury; where the cotton-barons were replaced by the local church mafia.

Mum was artistic and dad was into Zen and loved cars. You can imagine the horror of the local vicar, who promptly decided, along with his mate – the local primary school headmaster, to disown this ‘heathen family’.

They had their revenge, later, but that’s another story…

We had little money, but lots of intention. Back in those days, life seemed full of potential, and it manifested in our dreams … and the things we liked.

I’m not sure where it came from, but every time I see an image with ‘stripey light’ patterns, I get this undefined memory from my childhood – more of a feeling than a tangible recollection.

It may be because we had full venetian blinds in the living room of the new bungalow – whose monthly mortgage payments we couldn’t always afford. Kids are not supposed to hear these things … but do.

The blinds were bright red and spectacular in the right light. Mum painted flowers and landscapes on the back of cereal packets in oils and made fabulous clothes that saw cutting- patterns spread across the carpet in the living room.

The living room (the one with the red blinds in it) seemed to always have the sounds of Beethoven, Taikovsky and The King and I film track.

In an artistic sense, I was very style conscious, and, even as a child, I would study the interior of houses to see what people had made of them. The best ones were glimpsed only through windows, and I began to see what a difference a little money made to quality.

There’s another memory that goes with it – a red Mercedes sports car parked by a modern ‘bachelor-pad’ that looked so utterly sophisticated, I just wanted to stand and stare at it.

Many years later, I bought a (very) used one and considered having it restored… but a local Merc dealer talked me out of it. He said it was too far gone, and that the only good thing about it was the engine.

We used it for a few months over the summer, then managed to sell it as a partial trade-in for a company car. I didn’t even get my money back, but it had been fun.

The memory of it lingers. Soft evenings with the top down; country lanes that led to Southport; fish and chips as the sun set over the beach where the sea only appears a few times a year.

I’ve rambled a bit. See the power of those stripes!

©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

http://www.suningemini.blog

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)