Sundays in the 1970s involved long afternoons visiting our elderly relatives. My grandfather’s sisters, Ethel and Connie never had any children, so their houses were not set up to entertain my brother Gordon and me. Auntie Ethel and Uncle Aidan lived in Withington, with Uncle Aidan’s elderly mother, Mrs Pollitt, next door. Afternoon tea consisted of tinned ham and salad followed by peaches and carnation milk and we had to sit and endure the polite conversation, or if we were lucky, watch the snooker. The highlight for me, however, was being allowed access to Auntie Ethel’s box of old certificates and photos. As well as the old sepia photos, there was a handwritten note, copied from an old family Bible stating the dates of birth of the Yarwood children, a death certificate for my great-great- grandfather and his wedding certificate from 1874. These were the oldest things I had ever seen, and they captured my imagination. I wanted to know who these people were, where they lived and what life was like for them. I wanted to match photos to names and find out how they fitted into family stories. It started me on the road to this research.