In the late 40's and early 50's we were pretty much only taking photos in black and white. However looking through old family photographs I have noticed that some had been artificially coloured by hand. The picture of my mother on the beach was in black and white, but I have added the hand colouring effect digitally, and this is pretty much how they looked. When I was a child we didn't go far for our holidays. On one occasion we stayed in a caravan at Shoeburyness, which was only about 20-25 miles from where we lived at West Horndon. If we were feeling really adventurous we would go to Clacton or Walton on the Naze. These days we would regard these as day trip destinations. I suspect from the look of the sand that the picture was taken at Walton.
We didn't take much in the way of entertainment, and as you can see my mother was spending her time knitting. I am not sure what the jug was for, but guess that in the days before paper and plastic cups, that if you went to a beach side cafe you were provided with a tray proper china cups and presumably a jug of milk. How very civilized!
My mother was a keen knitter, as were most women after the war. My mother , however, took it one step further and bought a Rapidex knitting machine. She made knitted items for many people in our village, and I remember that woollen bobble hats were very popular. There was a drawback however! Normal knitting was nice and quiet, but a knitting machine was very noisy. They were manual, not electric, and when trying to watch TV in the early 50's my father and I had to endure the constant racket coming from my mother's machine. My sister and I both wore the woolly bobble hats and like half the village walked around looking like "Where's Wally"!
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