Recently I had the pleasure of restoring images from my own family’s slide collection.  I sat with my Mum and sifted through hundreds of slides, labelled those we could, scanned, restored and archived them so my children and generations to follow will have a record of the family that came before them.

Most of the images I chose to restore were of family members and special events.  There were also however a few ‘amusing’ images which simply brought back some very fond memories.  This is one of them:

Treasure, the little black pony with our cat Ginger.

Meet Treasure, the little black pony with four white socks and a star on her forehead.   My Dad purchased her from a clearance sale when I was just a young girl for me and my siblings to ride.  He was assured that she was ‘bomb proof’, a term used to describe a pony perfect for young children.  Once saddled, she was ‘bomb proof’.  She was a bit of a nag though.  You had to work very hard to get her out of a trot, but she was great with kids.  The problem was that it was almost impossible to get a saddle on this little pony’s back.

I was only about 8 or 9 years old when Treasure came into our lives.  I was independent and usually caught and saddled my own horse when I wanted to go for a ride but Treasure had different ideas.  She would never let me saddle her by myself.  She would rear up, bite and kick; not qualities you would normally associate with a ‘bomb proof” pony.  If I wanted to saddle her, I needed my Dad’s help.

Note the makeshift saddle.  I remember making that special ‘saddle’ with some baling twine and an old potato sack.  Treasure was happy for me to use this special tack.  It didn’t rub or pinch her girth and it kept her sweat and winter coat from my clothes.

Now you may have also noticed a cat sitting on Treasure’s back.  That is Ginger.  He was a much loved family cat, champion rat catcher and friend who lived to a grand old seventeen years of age.  Why he is sitting on Treasure’s back I have no idea but it doesn’t surprise me that we would have a photo of a cat sitting on a horse.  Who doesn’t? 🙂

As for the restoration, well, it was very simple.  This image simply needed colour and exposure correction plus a little dust and scratch removal.  It was a surprisingly clean slide which made the job of restoring very easy.

I often share stories about my childhood with my own children.  Sometimes I don’t think they believe some of the things that me and my siblings and our friends got up to on our family farm. It has been so much fun sharing some of these photographs with them and I can’t wait to share more of them with you.

Carol