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.
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.
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.
Family is a Victorian invention anyway.
ReplyDelete