Tonie Rigby : I remember the North

First then....lived with last weeks display .....which I liked last week.....but.....over the week it has made me feel like it was almost an information board ! Like a display in lots of visitor's centres that I have been in , in different parts of the world. Interesting ( well , to me , ) So it made me think I could tell people about me.... First off then....

I remember the North ( working title )
I grew up in the sixties, but actually, the sixties never got to my Oldham ! It was like Lowry streets. Lots of terraced houses, lots of mills, lots of family living close by. Lovely childhood which, as a young adult, Radio 4 Women's hour told me was the poorest town in the Northwest of England ! So, these are my rememberings.....

I remember it always being sunny.
I remember popping tar bubbles on the cobbled roads.
I remember making tar balls.
I remember the smell of petrol that we had to be rubbed in to remove the tar at bedtime.
I remember playing out from dawn to dusk.

I remember the coal pit hills. A forbidden place, all the more exiting for being forbidden. I never understood how my Mum knew I had been playing on the coal pit hills. Loved it.

I remember my landscape of houses and mills.

They took down the chimneys first, dismantling Oldham.

From the mills to the hills. I still live in Oldham ( one of the poorest towns in the uk ) but I live on the outskirts now, in the hills ( one of the top ten places to live in the uk )

Memories are of grey. .

Whichever way you looked, there were houses and chimneys. Loved it.

I remember the pea soupers ( fogs and smogs ) that enveloped us in ochrey grey.

I remember the streets being wide and long, empty of cars, waiting to be played on......

I love grey to this day.

So, maybe I will do some more , ' rememberings, ' but maybe the muse might have buzzed off. We

will see tomorrow.

This was today's daily walk painting, finished at 9 o'clock tonight. The light and the walk were special tonight. Acrylic, 33 inches square.

So, second go at creating my Northern memories.....All 15 cm sq. Acrylic and sumi ink on photographic paper. The sumi ink makes the paint kind of dirty, just like coal dust would do.