Minnie

This is Minnie, a 1" scale traction engine - she was built by my late Father and one of my regrets is that I have absolutely no idea how to steam her, or indeed whether she will still run after several years of gathering dust along with other examples of Dad's model engineering skills.

I am a very practical person, and like "getting my hands dirty", which I guess I inherited from him, along with the love of photography. His grandfather, A R Pickett, was a professional photographer with a studio in Bexleyheath - and somewhere there is a professional photo of Mum as a baby taken by the studio, as well as a life size hand-tinted one of Dad as a tot ( affectionately know as "bubbles"). After he died, the family cleared out the studio and threw 100s of glass photographic plates away - looking back with our greater appreciation of history, one wonders what was lost, and not just in monetary terms.