For the last week or so I have been busy trying to finish a mini-book I started months ago. It was part of Shimelle's online class, 'There's No Place Like Home', which I started way back in March I think. The mini-book I'm trying to complete was one of the first assignments, entitled 'A Portrait of My Home Town'. The idea was to take pictures of your home area (I chose to interpret this as where I live now, rather than where I was born) and compile them along with your memories and stories.
This week I have taken masses of pictures of Woodside, Ashburton, Addiscombe and Croydon town centre, to add to those I took back in early Spring. In doing so, I have discovered beauty in the new and the old in my surroundings. I have become pretty good at spotting photo opportunities wherever the boys and I happen to go on our daily jaunts. The trouble is, I have so enjoyed discovering little gems of old buildings around me that I have developed a new obsession - delving into the past. I've found some great books in the library about Old Croydon, filled with fascinating photographs from the 1960s and even as far back as the 1800s. Croydon is now so dominated by hideous concrete and glass tower blocks it's hard to imagine what it was like in the past.. but here and there are intriguing glimpses of another world.
