How rapidly things do change.

These last few days we have been attempting, yet again, to de-clutter the Stygian Stables that masquerade as our loft. One of the things to emerge from the darkness was this photograph of Mrs Talpa taken a few, well actually quite a lot of, years ago. It reminded me of just how rapidly things change in our modern lives.

When the photograph was taken not many people had a camera, and certainly not one capable of producing a decent portrait. So, people went to the local photographic studio to have their children photographed.

At that time colour photographs were rare, despite the fact that the first colour photograph had been taken way back in 1855, by James Clerk Maxwell, Professor of physics at Aberdeen University. The alternative, in Mrs Talpa's youth, was to have your B&W portrait skillfully hand coloured by the studio. In this age of cheap digital cameras and digital processing it might all seem to have happened a very long time ago, but not really!

They say that the camera never lies, but it does. Mrs Talpa doesn't have blue eyes, nor ginger hair, and the dress she was wearing was yellow, not blue!