CAIRO - 1945, 1965, 2010

That strange moment when you discover three generations of your own family travelled to more-or-less the same spot... and you were pretty much totally unaware of at least some of it ever happening.

Top left is my father standing close to the Sphinx, I think just after the war ended, in 1945. The main picture is the one my Grandfather took during their (second) cruise on the SS "Canberra" in the summer of 1965. Top right is my own snapshot, taken during our flying visit to Giza in March 2010.

Strangely enough, whilst I knew Dad was in Cairo in 1945, I did not know that my Grandparents went there at all until I read the label on that big box of slides towards the end of last week. They did have a "coffee table" book about Egypt (which I still have, somewhere...) but the fact that they'd been was something I knew nothing about.

Such a chatty bunch, eh?

Of course I am particularly jealous that he was allowed to take pictures inside the Museum of Antiquities in 1965, because in 2010 this was very much forbidden - although, given that he only took five, maybe they weren't then, either.

That said, five photographs in the age of slide film in manual cameras is probably equivalent to the fifty-plus I'd probably shoot off in no time whatsoever on a digital one when photographing anything at all - no matter how mundane - these days.

Those five pictures that my Grandfather took, of course, I will share with you all at some other time.

Another point of minor interest that I have realised from the admittedly meagre labels, is that, by going on this cruise, they missed my first birthday, which is kind of fair enough. After all, by popping into the world when I did the previous year they were able to know that I had already arrived before setting off to Southampton for their first go on that renowned vessel.

Overall, I think that both times they probably made the correct decision. I don't think that the sort of family gatherings for the slightest of occasions that occur nowadays were quite the done thing back then and, to be perfectly frank with you, given our experiences in later years, I can't imagine any of us would have preferred things to have been any different.

DAD'S D-DAY

Watching all of those old soldiers last Friday has set me thinking about where the members of my own family were and what they were doing on that momentous day, because, to be perfectly honest, it's really not something that I can ever remember being mentioned. Mum's parents never mentioned it, nor did mum herself, and I was never really close enough to Dad's side of the family to ever really know much about anything they did, so I don't know how any of them felt about it, or how involved with it any of them were.

Did a huge sigh of relief cross the country, or were nails being bitten everywhere? After all, despite the feeling that the big push towards victory was finally on, many must have already realised that those much-feared telegrams would be getting printed in their thousands over the coming days, weeks, and months.

Maybe I was still too young when I was actually in the room with any of my family to have interesting conversations about anything other than my toys, or what we were having for tea, or whether I could go out to play, or perhaps I was just of an age when you got sent out of the room when the grown-ups wanted to talk, or I was already in bed when the big stuff came up. I remember being very swiftly "Shushed" in one hotel room when I asked (rather too loudly) what "The Dambusters" were when I read a page in the back of my book promoting another book about them from the same publisher.

I also remember a rather magical evening on holiday in Yugoslavia back when I was about ten when we were having an evening meal in a restaurant and my dad got chatting to another old soldier and started telling tales of their experiences in the war, of Oxo cubes, and boxing matches, and my father being mocked for his faith, but apart from that, and a few chunnerings around about the time of the 40th anniversary of V.E. Day with an old pal who had also still been battling away out in the Far East long after that, most of the time it just wasn't something that got talked about.

So, basically, I don't know where my dad was on D-Day, but I'm guessing it was probably working in a hospital in Bangalore. There's a photo from November 1944 which mentions being posted to Burma, but for most of the year before he'd been in India, working as a medic in various hospitals, cutting facial dressings into smaller pieces to make them less painful to remove, and dealing with unwanted pups in a slightly unfortunate way.

How he became a medic, I don't know.

I'm fairly sure that it wasn't for religious reasons. He once told me about injuring himself leaping underneath a gun, and a long story about getting drummed out of a parachute regiment which involved a badly packed parachute which would have killed him if he'd used it, but, generally, it looks as if my dad was just one of those people who the army had under their command but couldn't easily find something to do with.

It sounds as if the medics had a pretty tough job to do, on the whole, despite not being combatants, and dealing with the aftermath of some of those bloody battles can't have been easy. I did hear once that he got given a medal that few people get because of something particularly nasty that he had to do, but, once again, it was never talked about.

Well, not with me, anyway.

There was an interview with a conscientious objector on the radio on the day of the D-Day anniversary who was a medic on one of the Normandy beaches. He was a person who would not fight on principle, but was in just as much danger as anyone, as he ran about on those bloody beaches treating the wounded as best he could, so if you want to call such people cowards, I believe that you need to think about that again...

At that time, mum was twelve, which, given that she's gone now, just shows me how old the veterans are all getting, and how much we ought to be giving them our respect for what they did on our behalf.

Looking at them on Friday, though, it seems like some of them still look pretty spry though, and as if they'd do it all again if asked and, do you know what, I really wouldn't bet against them.

INDIA, 1943-1944

I've never been to India and, to be honest, I've never been all that inclined to go to India, either. That's not India's fault, by the way, it's really just that I've never fancied it.

I know that I like Indian food, and I know that the Indian cricket team is supposed to be very impressive to watch, two things - I imagine - which would be those which are most likely to make me venture there if anything would, but I don't really think that either of them are enough to make me want to catch that plane.

Basically the idea of the place terrifies me, especially as I'm someone who can suffer culture shock in a relatively conservative place like California over something as harmless as how a light switch operates, and who spent two weeks in Egypt a few years ago basically walking about in total terror of having to engage with anything outside our little "tourism bubble" that might require me to interact in a situation where I could get something terribly "wrong…"

It's a shame really because in terms of art, culture and design, India has given such a lot to the world, but it remains somewhere I'm not all that fussed about seeing, at least not unless I have a fully versed and capable guide to deal with every potential little problem which might occur and, to be frank, I hardly think that I'm ever likely to be in a position to afford that level of molly-coddling...

Of course, those mad mop tops, The Beatles obviously spent some time there during their mid-era Sgt Pepper phase and seemed impressed, and lots of people we know seem to have been on holiday there and been rather impressed too, and a fair amount of jobs seem to have been relocated there over the years, but somehow the idea of the place and the diseases I could catch or the places I could manage to get lost in far outweighs my intrigue, despite the many telephone calls I receive from that strange and mysterious land sometimes referred to as the "sub-continent" which seem eager to sell me something or other.

I'm never entirely sure what, by the way, because the calls seldom get that far...

Think of Denholm Elliott playing Dr Marcus Brody in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"("You know Marcus, he got lost once in his own museum…") and then imagine someone not quite as capable of coping and you'll be approaching the ballpark of my own incompetence.

Anyway, during the war, as the pictures on this page of his photograph album shows, my father was stationed in India, both in Bombay and Bangalore.

Very brave of him, I feel.

That page also mentions that he spent some time in Scotland.

I have actually been to Scotland… So, if you want to talk some more about terrifying and strange places, I could, at least, discuss my adventures in Edinburgh during two weekends attending the Fringe Festival, or the four days spent staying near Fort William, or even that day trip to Tignabruich when I was nowt but a new potato, but I suspect that you might just suspect that I'd be taking the McMichael if I did that.

Still, perhaps I do need to get braver and think about exploring more of the world. Maybe I need taking in hand by someone far more adventurous than I am to get shown the ropes of what life is like in the big wide world.

Mind you, knowing my luck, those ropes you're showing me will turn out to be some kind of deadly venomous snake after all...

EGYPT, 1945

Picking up the theme of Dad’s wartime snapshots from yesterday’s chat about Burma, here’s another page from that album featuring a few of the pictures of him taken in Egypt during 1943.

I think what’s interesting about these pictures, other than the fact that they exist at all and that they confirm the fact that dad actually was actually in Egypt, (which is something which still astonishes me), is how much the ordinary soldiers were allowed to interact with the ancient monuments back then.

I mean I know there had been a worldwide war on, and that preserving antiquities probably wasn’t near the top of anyone’s agenda, just I know that the idea of the value of ancient monuments, tourism and looking after them future generations was probably still relatively in its infancy, but being able to go up to a statue and give it a cuddle, or just clamber up to the top of a pyramid “because it’s there” is something that modern visitors to Giza can only really dream of.

I certainly know that during my own visit, sixty-five years later, we had about two hours maximum in which to try and absorb the sheer wonder of being so close to these remnants of the ancient world and much of that was spent trying to keep out of the way of the hundreds of other coach-loads of tourists and get away from the many, many locals who would latch on to you and try to sell you some tat.

Interestingly for me, I found that just strolling along the length of one of the sides of the Great Pyramid to an alternative corner where the crowds basically weren’t was the best way to get a moment alone with the ancient stones, and photograph it to buggery without getting too many strangers into your shot, and that, I suppose, is my “Travel Tip of the Day…”

Mind you, I think everyone in our little minibus would have been gut-burstingly envious of the kind of access to those monuments which my dad and his “gang” must have had all those years ago, although, on balance, I think that I still would have preferred to be there under the circumstances I was rather than those that took him there.

Meanwhile, I hope that my dad and his pals, including, I presume, his best mate at the time, the enigmatic “Cyril”, managed to have a great day out visiting the pyramids in the midst of all that madness, and managed to create a few good memories from amongst all of the bad ones.

The first picture, however, also fascinates me for other reasons. My dad would have been about twenty-one at the time (maybe this was his birthday treat) and yet there he stands, “Near top of Pyramid” as the caption explains wearing a flippin’ monocle alongside those ridiculous army socks and looking for all the world like the officer he so very patently wasn’t.

I wonder about the conversation that was going on when they decided to set up that snapshot and what joke they thought that him standing there like that would illustrate to the folks back home?

I don’t suppose any of us can ever know, now…

Mind you, it’s almost endlessly fascinating to me how much older everyone looks in photographs from the forties, fifties and early nineteen-sixties. I know that it’s most likely down to the clothes and the haircuts, but everyone looks so much more mature.

And then, someone in charge of such things must have dropped a tab of acid (Oh, look at me pretending that I know all of the vernacular) and decided that they’d had enough of this and changed the rules so that we all dressed like children who’d just raided the dressing-up box and decided that wearing some curtains was the most sensible option, which led directly to the modern age where pensioners feel that they have to dress like toddlers and mumsies are mortified if they don’t get at least one inside-pants-targeting smarmy “But surely you must be sisters…” comment during the day.

People fought a ruddy great big war for our basic freedom, you know… and now we’re left with a world designed for and run by children, where “acting your age” is more likely to get you rounded up and shipped off to a death camp disguised as a rest home than to get you anything approaching respect.

Still, I guess that’s progress for you.

BURMA STAR

It's strange where your leaps of thought can take you.

The other week I was watching the "Top Gear" Burma special and, because parts of the programme were irritating me quite intensely, my thoughts began to drift and, after checking my messages on the evil but handy internet monitoring device, I was looking around for something else to concentrate on other than the TV blathering away in the corner, when my memories took me to the photo albums my dad created in the months just before he died, way back in 1985 when I was still a student.

This was, of course, inevitably all connected to the zeitgeist of what I'd been (sort of) watching, because, as we all know, everything is interconnected, and you can't set out on a journey through your thoughts without a trigger of some sort.

You see, in the latter part of the second world war, my dad was stationed in Burma and had a number of snapshots that he'd taken at the time and, as I was watching that show, for the first time in years, I began to wonder quite in which part of Burma he'd actually been in and whether he'd seen any of the spectacular sights that those three idiots in the lorries were enthusing about.

Probably not, I reasoned. After all, there was a war on. Stopping to look at the scenery was probably neither the brightest thing to do, nor likely to be at the top of anyone's list of priorities if they were trying to avoid getting shot at. Anyway, if truth is one of the first casualties of war, then the landscape and scenery must be at least in the top ten.

Anyway, the point is that I know that my dad had spent some time in Burma during the war, but I didn't really know quite where he'd been based. They probably weren't generally actually being shot at a lot, I imagine, because they were a medical unit, but I don't suppose that was any guarantee.

I knew that after ending up as a trained Medical Orderly, having failed at being useful in several other areas of army life, and having spent at least one night being convinced that he was an Oxo Cube (long story), he'd ended up in the jungle and had once had tales to tell long into the night when we had met a chap with a similar background when we had been on holiday when I was a youngster. There were also rumours that once reached me that some of the sights he'd seen and things he'd had to do in that Forward Treatment Unit couldn't have been all that pleasant for a twenty year-old lad from the Welsh Valleys, although we never really got the chance to ever sit down and chat about these things ourselves.

By the time I'd got to an age to understand such things, and out of the age of total self-absorption, and might have finally taken an interest, he'd already gone.

Interestingly enough, I remember him getting quite stroppy during that last summer of his life - the summer, incidentally, when I celebrated my twenty-first birthday - because of all of the V.E. Day celebrations which were going on. His circle of friends would chunner away in irritation that they had spent several more months still battling away in what seemed to them like it was a forgotten war out there in the jungle whilst Europe seemed to be of the belief that the fighting was all over.

Well, I say battling. By that stage of the war, as I mentioned, my dad was working as a Medical Orderly, and was unlikely to pick up that many weapons, but I'm sure that they got to fight a few battles of their own, too, even if they were only psychological.

Mind you, like many of his generation, he rarely talked about it. well, not unless he happened across (like during that long evening in Yugoslavia), another member of the "Burma Star Association" to chat with. This meant that I never got to know much about what went on there. There are just these few pages of photographs, with the notes and the names and the places scribbled underneath them, and a few snatched memories of conversations had with other people before I got sent off to bed.

Oh and the scrapbook, of course. More photographs and correspondence and documents from that part of his life which I may need to explore further some other time, whenever the mood, or the TV, sends me back into that dusty corner of the room.

Flicking through the pages of that dreadfully destructive self-adhesive photograph album, I can't help but notice that because of the war, my father had been to some interesting and unusual places which he might otherwise never have seen. There are pictures from India and Cairo, for example (some of which I might post here some other time), as well as, to someone with such strong religious beliefs as he had, the "Promised Land", all of which must have seemed strange and exotic to this young kid from South Wales who'd spent a lot of his youth in hospital and probably hadn't ventured much further than Cardiff before.

In fact, it's hard for me to picture my dad in these exciting faraway places, even though I do have the pictures to prove it, but it really wasn't half bad for some kid from the valleys...

It would be remiss of me not to comment upon that smutty use of the word "BURMA" when written on the back of letters home during those frustrating war years. I believe that it was supposed to mean "Be Undressed Ready My Angel" although I don't suppose that this would have been the intention when this God-fearing son of Wales was writing home to his Ma...

25 YEARS ON

It’s twenty-five years ago today since I got the telephone call that told me my Dad had died. I remember quite vividly that it was a Thursday. I was in my final year at art school and, as they had to do in those pre-post-it, pre-mobile-phone days, if the administration office got a personal message for a student, they tended to write it on a piece of paper and tape it up outside the office door and hope that you would notice it.

So after about half an hour or so someone - I can’t for the life of me remember who it was now - found me in the corridor or the canteen or somewhere and told me there was a message for me. Something about “phoning home immediately…”

“Not again!” I remember muttering before stomping rather angrily off towards the office to get an explanation.

This probably wasn’t the most obvious reaction, you might have thought, but there had been a curious coincidence that I never really got to the bottom of. Exactly two weeks earlier, a similar message had been posted on a Thursday morning at roughly the same time. My father had not been a well man all his life, having grown up in relative poverty in the Welsh valleys in the 1930s, and he’d been rather more seriously ill for quite some time and indeed he’d had to retire due to this ill health about seven years earlier at the grand old age of 54. That’s an age that’s starting to feel horribly imminent to me these days. So, that call had rather shaken me, and I’d dutifully rung home only to be told by my Dad that he was fine and no, they hadn’t rung me, there must have just been some kind of a mix up. We had a short chat until the pips went and, being an art student, I ran out of small change and we said our goodbyes.

I was a tad annoyed at this series of events, not least because I’d been rather worried and in a bit of a panic and just because someone had got their wires crossed. The administrator I spoke to apologised and I went off to get on with slapping paint and ink around for a couple more weeks and forgot all about it.

So, when it happened again, I felt I was rather justified in going into the office and rather testily asking what was going on. I started to explain that this had happened before and they were very patient and kind and told me they really thought I should call home.

So I did... and my sister answered and, well… he’d gone.

My sister told me later that my Mum thought it might be best if they lied to me, and told me that he was still alive so that I wouldn’t be too upset to drive back. Sanity prevailed however, and I was told the truth, and whilst my journey back up from South Wales wasn’t the happiest I’ve ever made, at least I wasn’t hammering the pedals of my rusty old Mk3 Cortina through the floor on the off chance that I might get back in time.

That journey remains more vivid in my memory than the events at home during the subsequent week. I remember crying occasionally, shouting angrily at the world in general (but - for once - not at any other motorists) and having the sun setting rather beautifully off to my left hand side as I headed further North. I hadn’t been dawdling. After making the phone call home, and the subsequent support from my friends who’d looked after me and calmed me down, I’d had to go back to my room on another site and pack a bag before setting off for home. It was late October and the sun started setting relatively early, but it seemed very strange, like I’d never really noticed it setting before, and so did the trees in the streets around the family home which had never seemed quite so vivid and alive to me as they did that week.

It was an odd week altogether if I’m honest. I remember having the odd supportive drink with an old friend, and the visit to register the death being lightened by one of the wedding announcements that were posted on the wall being a “Mr. Plant” marrying a “Miss Pott”. The only really strong memory I have, because I don’t really remember the actual funeral at all, is of one of my father’s old friends visiting the house and seeming to find it very inappropriate when my sister and I were mulling, in the amused way that youngsters do, over the fact that the Funeral Directors hadn’t requested any clothing and we had this image of our dear old Dad, a Methodist Lay Preacher no less and God-fearing son of the chapel for all of his life, being stark naked in the church during his own funeral. Apparently they dressed them in some kind of towelling robe I was later told, which I still think is a rather dull answer to a rather interesting question.

So a week later, I returned to college. My lecturers were very supportive. One asked me how old my father had been and seemed generally troubled when it turned out they had been the same age, but things got back to normal pretty soon after that, and my final year as a student passed by much as you’d expect, and after that I returned home and life unfolded as it does.

Every Wednesday morning during term time whilst I was a student, though, right until the day he died, my Dad had sat himself down and written me a letter, keeping me up to date with news from home, and the last one had been waiting for me in the mailroom pigeonhole when I returned to college. I still have it somewhere. I really must dig it out and have another read. It won’t say much of interest, just the usual bits and pieces of the humdrum of life, but as a piece of my Dad’s last full day of life, I guess it’s kind of priceless.

In the years before he died, my father gathered together all his photos and cuttings and what-not into some albums and scrapbooks because I guess he kind of knew we were never likely to get the chance to have any proper little chats or go to the pub so I could buy him a pint and talk about the old days as I got older. I look through them from time to time and the photo attached to the top of this page, taken when he was just 21 and the same age I happened to be when all this happened, is the one that came to mind when I was on holiday in Egypt earlier this year. It was just very pleasant to be able to stand in more-or-less the same spot as he had done himself some 65 years earlier and share a memory of a place.