Thats a great thread alanabit, I'm lucky really, a lot of the tapes I get to work on are obviously very personal, so its like taking a peek into other peoples lives and there has been quite a few that stir up the old emotions, thats probably why I love my work so much, real human stories.

Some tragic (like the first one), some just really happy, like granma and grandpa's golden wedding anniversary party in Ireland in 1958 with everyone singing, telling jokes, and discussing various family memories, and by god, some of the singers are spectacular considering it was in someones front room, singing into a little plastic microphone.

One in particular I remember doing was a tape with a Christmas message from America (there's a song title for you) in the 60,s from a grandson, obviously adult, to his grandmother in Ireland in which he admitted not believing some of the stories he had been told about his grandfather's whaling days, and it was only now that he had seen some old photographs of his grandfather standing outside his cottage with the huge complete jawbone of the whale leaning up against the wall that he realised the tales had to be true. He spoke of the tales he had heard from his mum and dad of their journey from Ireland across to America in the "old days" and the various members of their now quite large family, and I quote, "to give you some idea grandma of what's going on here in New York at the moment I'm putting the Andy Williams Christmas Show on here for you". The complete show then followed with Bing Crosby and other guests.

There are so many different stories like, the lady who in 1954 when she was a wren, walked into a music "shop" in Scotland to record two songs which involved a pianist sitting in the middle of the room, and being told to project her voice towards the mic on the other side, ended up with a "record" god only knows what it was made of ,I think it must have been before shellac 'cos the deterioration was the worst I have had to deal with so far, but she ended up happy.

All these things take me back , and remind me of things that I had forgotten long ago, and now I'm an official "old age pensioner" its great to look back and remember, if you know what I mean.

Crumbs! just realised how I've been rambling on, I'll go now, Promise.