Wigan Album

I know that "parlour" was a popular description of the front room. I always got the impression that parlours were a bit posh and the best room or one not used every day. I'm still stuck today with watching the telly in the front and sitting in the back.
We had a front room and a back room and the front room was the centre of attraction for all activities principally because it had the fire in it which the back room lacked.
The big table was a central feature and seemed to occupy the whole room. All visitors would park up here and not leave until awash with tea and empty of all news and gossip. That could well be just what's happening in this picture. I haven't been born yet, I think. Or, perhaps I was about to be. Maybe, even, the belly laughing started me off - who knows, but I'll date this 1958 on the basis that I can't have been far away.
The table's littered with tranklements; a box once storing photographic paper now home to film cases; a pink paper with a notebook in which was kept details of Lit plans and perms for the Pools. There's a sugar bowl and I'm surprised the teapot's missing. It may have been sitting under the geyser int back.
You'd be alright trying to buy a sideboard like that today in flatpack. There's a bottle of Indian ink tucked away safe on the shelf to the left and if you catch the reflection, along with the bare bulb, you can see a maiden full of clothes hoisted on the ceiling above the fire. To the far left is a jet black figurine which I suspect could have been a cannel carving - there were a few of these, we once burned a broken boot, but I don't remember this one.
Whatever was going on it was good. Working hands and laughing eyes.