Over recent months I have been restoring photographs for my customer Irene Boocock. It soon became clear that Irene was working on her memoir for her family and she got in touch when she had finished it by the Christmas deadline to let me have the reactions from the family and herself when it was completed.

Here’s what she sent me:

 I have always thought of writing about my early life as a legacy for my children.  I regret not asking my mother more questions about her childhood and that I didn’t find out more about the short time my parents had together before he was lost at sea while serving on the Arctic Convoys.  Like others considering writing about their life, there were always reasons for me to put this off.  However, I finally began preparing notes and tentatively made a start on the first draft. After gathering lots of photographs together to scan onto my writing, I realised I would need help as many were damaged and faded.  This is where Richard came into the project, employing his expertise and restoring treasured photographs beautifully.  The first one he restored was a very early photograph of myself which had suffered much damage over the years having been folded in half, sellotaped together and with several tears and scratches. I couldn’t believe the transformation Richard achieved and over the next months, there followed more restorations, each one securing a place in the memoir.  A very special one was the photograph he created, from two separate images, of my parents as we had never seen one of them together. 

I am so pleased with my completed book, happy in the knowledge that my early life is preserved for my children and grandchildren and in the process, I have paid tribute to my parents.  There is no doubt that the restored photographs – courtesy of Richard’s dedication and undoubted expertise – add so much to the story of my early life.  To anyone thinking about writing a memoir, I would encourage you to make a start as the rewards are so worth the time and effort.  At Christmas I gave out copies of my memoir to my family and the response was truly overwhelming.  I would also wholeheartedly recommend asking Richard to restore your faded/damaged photographs to enhance and safeguard those frozen precious  moments from your past. Good Luck!

This was very gratifying for me to receive and I can only encourage everyone to make the time and take the effort to ask questions of relatives about family history so the stories are not lost forever. I hear this so often “If only I’d asked my parents about their early life and who is in all these old photographs” is something I hear a lot and have actually said myself.