About
This site was created by me, Martin Cook. I made it to put my old photographs and diaries in.
Why Uncle Cliff’s Attic?
I called it Uncle Cliff’s Attic because an attic is where you find old, surprising things.
Imagine you had an old uncle, a childless but jolly chap who visited you occasionally and chatted about daily things, like the weather, the garden, and the people you both knew, and whose past you assumed was dull and provincial.
Then he died, and it fell to you to clear his house. You offer furniture to relatives and friends, take clothes and kitchenware to charity shops, and clear your way up to the attic.
The edges of the attic are lined with suitcases and boxes draped with flowery curtains from the 1960s or 70s. A wooden chest catches your eye, and you open it up. It’s stacked with diaries and photo albums, from a youth you never imagined your uncle had, of foreign landscapes and people, and thoughts and experiences he never mentioned.
That’s like me with my old photos and diaries. I didn't touch them for twenty-five years, and now they seem like someone else’s. So much has happened in between - relationships, children, bereavement, new people and places, and the steady drip of experience that weathers your sensibility into a shape that, if your youth could see it, he would flinch with horror.
Cousin Cliffy
I didn’t have such an uncle, but I did have a Cousin Cliffy. We called him that, but he was my grandfather’s cousin, and an old man when I was a boy. He came round for dinner sometimes and gave my brother and I thoughtful presents, like fishing nets and model aeroplanes.
He laughed a lot and told us that one day, when he was a boy, he visited my great-grandfather’s farm. It would have been in the early 1900s, and he was in a field by the house when he saw a hot air balloon approaching. He ran terrified into the house crying, “The martians are coming! The martians are coming!” He’d never seen a balloon before, and didn’t know they existed.
I once went into his house in Darlington, and I have a hazy memory of a room cluttered with curiosities. Unfortunately, the only things I can remember are an old wingbacked armchair next to an empty parrot cage on a stand.
My mum had to clear his house. I never got to see what was in it, but in a peculiar turn of events, six months ago, 40 years after Cousin Cliffy’s death, I inherited his photographs.
The attic
My granny and grandad lived in Prospect House, a big house overlooking the market place in Easingwold, North Yorkshire. It had a grand front stairs that swept up to a landing, then turned back on itself up to the bedrooms.
At the top of the stairs was a small door on the right. This led to the servants’ rooms in the attic. Of course the servants were gone (this was the 1970s), and grannie told us to never open the door. The floorboards in the attic were rotten and we’d fall through them. I don’t know if this was true, or if she was trying to scare us.
One day, though, when everyone was downstairs, I did open the door. A flight of bare wooden steps led up to darkness. Now I wish I’d crept up them, to see what was there, but at the time I was too scared.
So attics make me think of passed time, the disquieting procession of life where people change, move on, and vanish into darkness.
Design
I used to do research in old university libraries - at UCL and the University of London - and read journal articles from the 1920s and 30s. I liked the typography, and I like the typography of Bibles and prayer books from the Victorian era.
I read that the types of fonts they used are now unfashionable, so I am grateful for the person who designed Old Standard TT, the font used in the title and headings of this site.
What about the diaries?
I haven’t typed them up yet. They are mostly of the five years I spent in South-East Asia. I plan to put them live in chunks, with the first lot going live in Autumn 2023.