I was recently cleaning out a tin of old photographs (took hours as I lingered over every one) and I came across this photograph of my mother and two of her sisters. I think it sums up for me the optimism of the early post-war years.
Here they sit together on Skegness beach - a mile of sand before the chilly north Sea appears - in their sensible shoes and stockings, all well-corseted and all wearing what my mother chose to call "washing frocks". They have all brought their handbags, which would no doubt be full of useful things, no designer bags here - all sensible stuff.
The three husbands are around because their empty deck chairs and the odd sports jacket tells me this. One of them probably took the photograph on our old box Brownie camera.
I was a small child so I would be around somewhere, but I don't remember the occasion. My only memory of that holiday in Skegness is of going off with the three men and being allowed to put a penny in the "What the butler saw" machine; and all I remember of that is an awful lot of garter.
But what strikes me most - in retrospect - about this photograph is how happy they all are and how they appear to be enjoying themselves a lot. Of course they have good cause to be happy at this time because all three of them had had sons in the Second World War and they had all returned safe and sound. So maybe it was just a good time for optimism.
(My mother is the one on the left)
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