THE RED BAG

THE RED BAG

The cheap red bag had mould on it

Though it might have been dust

I unzipped the top and the scent of her

Burst into the room

A lightweight nothing of a bag

Possibly a free gift

From a catalogue

The one she always had packed

And took to hospital

Time and again

Half a lifetime ago

Three years on

I make a start

Well, half a start

A reluctant start

On sorting through

The bright red bag has mould on it

Not that I’m that fussed

A zip on the top and one at the side

Containing her things

Hiding the last remnants of a life -

Some old slippers

Rotting slowly away;

A paperback book less than half read -

The bookmark marking

A vital moment;

Some cheap perfume

Three years on

That pile of boxes

Still sitting there

I ought to make a start

On sorting through

Because the red bag has mould on it

It has to be thrown away

Though I must explore it beforehand -

Notelets for unwritten thoughts;

Dried-up pens; Bits of old debris

A wash-bag with creams,

Toothpaste and a brush;

Her frozen wristwatch hidden away

Two pairs of spectacles

Still in the cases

That she used to see me with

Three years on

That pile of boxes

I knelt on one

The crack of breaking glass

Whilst not sorting through

The old red bag inside a black bag

Waiting by the bins

Along with the perished slippers

The rolled up tights

Throwing away her memory

With the red bag

From a catalogue

The one she always had packed

And took to hospital

Time and again

Half a lifetime ago

Martin A W Holmes, September 2016

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (1) - THREE RANDOM SLIDES

So, the scanner arrived a little earlier than expected and, because it was there, it only seemed sensible to try it out, and so I opened the unmarked wooden box and found three loose slides just lying around on the top of all the others.

These three slides were probably just the extra ones that wouldn't fit neatly inside the 100 slots that this particular selection of glass mounted slides was in. One of the glass holders for these three was  broken, so this seemed a good place to start experimenting...

Anyway, scan number one was of a street scene "Somewhere in Europe" and is made all the more perky because of the fact that it contains some rather wonderful old cars. As you can see, I hadn't yet worked out the best way to get the frame to line up with the scanner, and so half of the image is missing. At this point, I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed by the image on the screen on the scanner itself, and was seriously suspecting that I had been sold a pup. However, after I had eventually zapped these three images, I whipped out the SD card and plugged it into the side of the telly and was, quite frankly, rather impressed at the results, which means, of course, that now I am rather doomed (sorry "committed") to proceeding with the project.

Anyway, slide number two seems to be a rather jolly picture of Nice-Cote D'Azur airport taken at some point in the mid-to late 1960s, or perhaps earlier. Like I mentioned earlier, this particular box is unmarked in terms of date and location, and, because they've all been remounted inside glass slide mounts, the cardboardy surround bit (which - as I now know from my explorations - is usually date stamped for the processing) is also missing. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I suspected I was about to be exposed to a hundred photographs of the south of France taken at some point during the 1960s.

I was wrong about this.

The next picture was between the two pieces of shattered glass in a broken slide mount. This appears to be an interior of an airport, and I can only assume that it is the same one. In the background is a rather impressive silver Caravelle (?) parked at the gate, although one of the shortcomings of the scanner that I've yet to explore is how to adjust the tones so that the stuff in the background is clearer than the stuff in the foreground, assuming that I can.

Anyway, later on, I removed the film from  the broken mount and I scanned it again using the negative tray and got a cleaner scan of it that didn't have any of the broken glass lines. Again, the aircraft in the background remains indistinct, but the image itself is a fascinating (well, to me anyway) insight into how international travel has changed during the last half century or so. Not least because those chairs are just so darned cool.

Interestingly enough, it was at this point that I dug out the rather magnificent Hanimex "Hanorama" personal slide viewer that was also amongst the collection of my Grandfather's photographic stuff and had another look at the slide.

And yes, that Caravelle really is a thing of beauty, even though modern technology seems determined to deprive you from seeing it. I even tried taking a picture of the slide inside the viewer using my Teffalone, but that was a stupid idea, too, given that I was trying to juggle three things in two hands, and it has a tendency towards the bleach, too, unless you can adjust the screen with that fourth hand that I also didn't have.

Still, I think it made for a (slightly) interesting photo in itself, though, and also shows what the eye doesn't see when you're looking through one of these things.

Anyway, with renewed confidence, I returned to photograph number one and, hopefully more successfully, managed to scan the whole of that initial street scene, which now includes my Grandmother sliding out of frame bottom left in order to, presumably, slip into another little shop full of souvenirs.

Once I set about scanning the contents of the actual box, it became apparent that this was not a picture taken in France at all, but the entire set seemed to be pictures from various parts of Italy, and I can only assume that this was another cruise that required the passengers to depart from Nice after flying there.

So there we are. Early evidence of the International Jet-Set lifestyle of Grandma and Grandpa, in the days when such things were far less common than they are now. It certainly looks as if they had one heck of a retirement plan, and, with that in mind, I'll start boring you with their holiday snaps sometime soon.

We'll start with Italy, some time in the 1960s...

NEW PROJECT

Today, I am as pleased as I ever can be to be able to announce a (not very) exciting new project in that, after much procrastination and general dilly-dallying (unless, of course, those are both entirely the same thing), I've decided to order myself a negative and slide scanner in order to finally set about going through my grandfather's (relatively) vast selection of slides and, perhaps (if I don't get too bored or distracted), then set about going through my own negatives from the dawn of time and get the lot archived.

Grandad's slides have sat in a number of boxes since he died in 1980, and, since we cleared out my grandparent's house as my grandmother moved into her last home way back in 1988, they have moved along with me but they have rarely seen the light of day since. I do have his old projector and screen, and even one of those hand-held backlit viewers, but have rarely sat down and looked through them with any commitment.

Anyway, I reckon it's about time I did something with them, and the opportunity to "digitise" them is probably one that is too good to miss. After all, there's a better chance that they'll get looked at if they're in an "easy to view" format online.

On the whole, I don't imagine that they'll be of all that much interest, really. Lots of snapshots of long-dead people who I never knew and certainly won't recognise, but my grandparents did go on several holiday cruises during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and I imagine that his record of some of the places they went to might be of more general interest.

He was an odd cove, though. His filing system leaves a lot to be desired. I suspect that he knew what the labels meant and consequently thought that this would be more than adequate. Unfortunately, labelling your photographs with a year and just the name of the ship is unlikely, I imagine, to help with identifying many of the places, so I suspect that we're likely to be setting out on a very enlightening voyage of discovery as we go along.

And let's face it… Other people's holiday snaps can be as dull as ditchwater, and when you're as removed from the source as we all are (and you, dear reader, especially), the chances are that this is unlikely to be all that thrilling an experience for any of us.

That said, a wise man once said (or was it just me?) that the one thing that turns a banal photograph into an interesting one is time, so, well, you never know. It might be fun looking back on those lost times, smiling faces, and bewildering hats and beachwear.

However it all turns out, I'm unlikely to try to deal with more than one box at a time, so there's little chance of there being too much at a time to bore you, and there's a very, very good chance that I won't be able to get the settings right to get the device I've ordered to actually work at all, so this could all be yet another of Martin's Spectacular Online Follies, or, at the very least, a colossal waste of everyone's time and energy.

Anyway, the kit is yet to show up, and I'm liable to take a while to figure out just how the gizmo I've ordered actually works, so don't hold your breath for any exciting blasts from the past any time soon. (After all, I do have the rather worrying suspicion that I'm only really posting this at all so that I feel that somehow I will ave to make the effort and jolly well do it...)

Do, however (if you feel so inclined) "stay tuned!"

VJ DAY +70

Dad,
12 IFMTU,
1944
(For VJ Day +70)

MUSIC-CULL

Grandad he played Hammond Organ

Quite a musician he was in his prime

I imagine he thought that his legacy

Might re-emerge somewhere down the line.

Grandad bought me a half-size guitar

That he hoped I’d learn to play –

But the half-sized strings hurt my fingers

So eventually it was given away.

Grandad bought me a descant recorder

That I tooted through from time-to-time

It’s in its yellow bag in the attic

In a shoebox that I sometimes find.

Grandad bought me a steel harmonica

Made a tuneless racket whenever I’d blow

But I never did manage to play a good tune

So inside a box it just had to go.

Grandad bought sis an upright piano

Well it wasn’t for me, that’s for sure

It hung ’round for years not played very much

And she sold it when she felt quite poor.

Grandad gave up on buying me instruments

He couldn’t find a thing I would play

But now I wish he’d been more persistent

Because I’d love to play music these days.

Martin A W Holmes, July 2015

GRANDAD'S PHOTOGRAPHS 1919

Sometimes life can take you in peculiar directions. Last weekend I was having an exchange of views online, and the words moved, as they sometimes do, into the world of  “compare and contrast” and we were discussing how our parents and grandparents used to dress when compared to the modern phenomenon of (shudder!) going outside to the shops (or whatever) in their flippin’ pyjamas.

So far, so “old man’s prejudices” but it reminded me of a photograph that I was sure I’d seen as we went through my mother’s photographs in the period after her death, which was of a group of Edwardian looking ladies standing on the seafront on a summer’s day in hats and furs.

Long story trimmed, I turned the house upside-down and never found that particular snapshot, got very fretful and obsessive about “another thing lost”, and even rang my sister to ask if she’d got it amongst the bits and bobs she had salvaged, before deciding that this might be a misplaced memory of some other photograph that I saw at around the same time, but which wasn’t a “family snapshot”.

What I did find, however, were two exercise books that, a long time ago, had belonged to my grandfather when he was a teenager. This was in 1919 when he was a young fellow from that lucky generation who were just ever so slightly too young for the carnage of  the first world war.

In 1919 he was about fifteen and had an interest in “Amateur Photography” which was what he painted onto the cover of one of the books which, as we’ll see, was one of the few moments of “useful labelling” that he took the time to do.

Turning the pages, with the photos carefully mounted into the cuts in the pages, I was transported to a lost world of his other interests, most of which seemed to be industrial or mechanical, and he did seem to have developed an interest in motorcycles at a very early age, and I do (vaguely) remember family tales of him taking two days to drive to Cornwall in a motorbike and sidecar (in those “pre-motorway” days) shortly after his marriage

One thing that interested me was the what would is nowadays called a “selfie” that he took, presumably with his Box Brownie in the darkness of whatever room he had when he was growing up. It just goes to show, I suppose, that there’s nothing new under the sun, and, for as long as we have had photography, the photographers have been turning the cameras on themselves.

One of the problems I have had with my grandfather’s photographs is that there are very few labels on any of them. For years I have had his boxes of old slides (mostly taken during the 1950s and 1960s) stashed away and every time I decide to have a look at them, I am stymied by the fact that many of his holiday pictures are indexed simply by the name of the cruise ship they were on and nothing else in a kind of  “I know where they were taken, why should anyone else need to know?” way. There are boxes and boxes of pictures of interesting looking places and I have very few clues as to where any of them are, apart from the odd sign saying “Aeroport Nice” or wherever.

This is also true of the several books of pictures of family and friends, none of which I know, and who smile their long-dead smiles out at me in a series of enigmatic mysteries.

To be fair, when it comes to labelling, I tend to do this myself, which means that I have folder after folder of digital pictures marked “California 2012” or whatever, which wouldn’t be of much use to anyone who came to look through them in the unlikely event of me ever managing to become interesting enough for someone to care about doing so.

But those old exercise books contain their own mysteries from nearly a century ago, and I’d love to have asked him what was going on in several of the photographs, but, of course, I never even knew that these exercise books existed until long after he had died, because he never mentioned them.

Well, not to me, at least.

So I find myself wondering why a ship’s boiler might be sitting on a beach looking for all the world as if it has washed up onto the shore, which is, of course, most unlikely, even after the torrid maritimes of the First World War.

The boiler itself (with presumably a schoolfriend standing next to it for “scale”) looks very like the ones in my books about the “Titanic” so I’m pretty sure that it’s a steamship boiler, and, after posting it online, it was suggested that there used to be ship-breakers on the Mersey back then, so I suppose that it had something to do with that, as the only other “coastal” place that he might have had easy access to would, I presume, have been the Isle of Man, which he visited several times judging by the plethora of pictures of the “TT” races that he took.

There are a lot of pictures of old motorbikes, of course, but other mechanical things drew his attention, as they do me whenever there’s something “interesting” to photograph and I clamber all around it like David Bailey photographing a supermodel in order to create several hundred parts of the dullest photographic record ever known to  humanity.

Mind you a schoolboy - presumably a friend of his - sitting on a tank, or a cannon and a mine aren't necessarily things that we might see every day...

The odd thing is, of course, that the thing that interests us is how different the world was then, but what seems “old” to us was just commonplace and everyday then, and so those pictures of railway trains and aeroplanes were just ordinary things then that the passage of time has managed to make more fascinating.

One other mystery is the presence of several snapshots of what looks like a house collapse drawing a crowd. What they did for entertainment back in those “pre-television” times, eh? It looks as if they were building some kind of gasometer around (???) a couple of houses and a steel girder fell onto one of the houses.

Well, maybe. I didn’t realise that the two photos were connected at first, so I thought that the “boxy” shape sticking out of the roof might be part of an early aircraft because he had “form” with photographing disasters if the box of slides marked “Stockport Air Crash 1967” is anything to go by.

Anyway, I’m now pretty convinced that it’s the end of a box steel girder, but I still find myself wondering why you would build a gasometer before demolishing the houses, why it drew such a crowd, and whether there are any local news stories about it, wherever it was.

One photograph was labelled as being of “standing traffic” during a rail strike in 1919, which I thought was a tanker wagon, but it turned out, courtesy of the knowledgeable folk on the internet, to be another boiler, which led them to ask me whether my grandfather had some kind of obsession with boilers, and it was only then that the gears in my mind clicked into place and I realised that he did, indeed, spend his entire working life as a plumber.

This particular boiler was made, it turned out, by a rather famous boilermakers in Dukinfield, “Daniel Adamson & Co” which, because of the fickle nature of the universe, is pretty close to where I earn my own paltry crusts nowadays.

Funny how the world turns, isn’t it?

ONE OCTOBER MONDAY, 2013

Tick tock, twelve o’clock…

A ’phone call at the office; it’s the hospital (of course) -

Wanting to know when I would be available “to converse”

“So… When do you want me there?” I pathetically enquire

“Now, preferably” comes a scarily emphatic reply

Packing up my workspace, I leave without really knowing,

Yet inwardly dreading, what the afternoon might bring

Tick tock, one o’clock…

After battling through traffic and struggling to find a spot,

Taking deep breaths and digging deep for courage I’ve not got,

Trying to find any of so many desperate procrastinations,

Hoping against hope to shirk off this sense of awful realisation,

Sudden vital text messages to send, parking fees, those mundane chores

Anything to delay the need to be heading through those doors.

Tick tock, two o’clock…

Listening to the constant background hiss of an oxygen mask

I’m standing in a doorway looking at mum’s bed, too scared to ask

Suddenly, before I can, I'm whisked off to the “Relatives’ Room”

And a doctor whispers about symptoms and “pathways” through the gloom

Their concern seems to be of making mum “as comfortable as possible”

And asking “someone”, i.e. me (!) to make “that” dreadful call.

Tick tock, three o’clock…

A telephone provides a vital link to the world beyond this bubble

As I can still type words that said out loud cause me to struggle

When I try cough out these shards, my voice just cracks, and I start to cry

Yet still my Beloved’s come to hold my hand, and my sister’s on her way,

Sometimes we’re “sent away” to pace and wait in these “sitting” rooms,

And different heads seek other families for whom darkness also looms.

Tick tock, four o’clock...

Watching the deepest of sleeps and the shallowest of breaths

We sit at mum’s bedside just to “be there” if she awakes

Cups of tea and sandwiches measure a mother’s final day

In this way an afternoon and a lifetime simply slips away

The end of life is ticked down in plastic cups and stirring sticks

She’s held on tight ’til five o’clock, but we’re not sure she’ll manage six.

Tick tock, five o’clock...

The Church Minister arrives pulling up another bedside chair

We leave them alone for their one-sided chat and silent prayers

Afterwards, he talks to us sharing some fond memories that shine

Asks about my sister traveling, wondering if there’ll be enough time

He seems drained from having seen far too much of this lately

More members of his aging congregation to see when he goes away

Tick tock, six o’clock…

Shifts have changed, new nurses come to turn my mother over

Her breathing seems to get far worse, one rasp and then another

Her eyes snap open briefly but I don't think she really sees me

But perhaps she did in which case I was the last thing she got to see

She settles down, her breathing thin, the last few grains of life’s sand

There’s nothing else that I can do but sit and hold her hand

Tick tock, stop the clock…

I’m talking nonsense sitting next to her when my mother seems to… stop

No fanfares, no choirs of angels, life to death in just one small step

I find a nurse who sadly agrees and starts an all-too-familiar process

I kiss mum’s head, and say goodbye, give her hair a last caress

Now one of many faded blooms in hospital rooms a-plenty

My sister’s still on the motorway, time of death six-twenty.

Martin A W Holmes, June 2015

FOUR THURSDAYS IN 1985

On the first Thursday (and why was it always a Thursday?)
I pointed my old blue car towards the Art School
On a day like any other.
"You've got a message" someone said
"Taped up outside the office door"
The lined paper told me to ring home immediately,
And so...
With an aching heart, I did.
And it turned nothing was wrong
And so I chatted to my dad.

On the second Thursday (and it was still a Thursday)
I drove my old blue car towards the Art School
On a day like any other.
Life went on as normal
We signed in and went for coffee
And toasted sandwiches at Brown's cafe,
Meanwhile...
My dad sat at home.
Writing his weekly letter to me, and
That weekend I had a last chat to my dad.

On the third Thursday (a terrible, dreadful Thursday)
After parking my old blue car behind the art school
On a day like many others.
"You've got a message" someone said
"Not this again" I replied, crossly… and
The lined paper told me to ring home immediately,
And so...
I stormed into the office.
Demanding explanations
And they told me about my dad.

On that same Thursday (a long and tortuous Thursday)
I pointed my old blue car towards my home
On a day like no other.
"You need to come home" my sister had said
Despite my mother telling her to lie
Because she was worried about me driving
And so...
With the October sun setting to my left
I drove home in a fretful state
To hear about what happened to my dad.

On the fourth Thursday (because it had to be a Thursday)
I pointed my old blue car back towards college
On the day I left my mother.
Alone, two days after the cremation
After a week I remember little about
Apart from one or two bizarrely amusing moments
And so...
I returned to my new old life
And found, in the post-room pigeon hole,
A last letter from my dad.

Martin A W Holmes, June 2015

29 YEARS

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

It was twenty-nine years ago,

(And I was only twenty-one you know)

That I got the notification,

Of my father’s departation,

From this world to the next,

Which left me feeling vexed,

At the office in the Art School,

Who’d made me feel such a fool.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

Now just a fortnight before,

There’d been a message on their door,

To ring home urgently,

Which cut to the heart of me.

So I went and made the call,

But there was nothing wrong at all,

I’d feared for something bad,

But ended up chatting to my dad.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

There’d some kind of mistake,

The kind that secretaries can make,

They stuck that message to the wall,

Asking me to make that call,

So when it seemed to happen once more,

My jaw it hit the floor,

Because just two weeks later on

It seemed it was happening again.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

Only this time it was true,

They “really thought” I should try to get through

To my family at home,

On that grotty old payphone,

So I rang and heard the worst,

And into tears I did burst,

Before being helped out by my pal,

Then driving home for the funeral.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

October’s not great for me,

Three such anniversaries, you see?

Lost my mum, my friend, and my dad

To a month I now think of as bad,

So if you think I get a bit obsessed,

Or more than a little depressed,

Just think about what I’ve lost,

And why I’m counting the cost…

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

That was Welsh for “Trevor” you see.

He was Trefor with an “f”

Trefor with an “f” you see?

He was Trefor with an “f”

My dad was “Trefor” you see.

ONE YEAR ON

One year on,
One year gone.
My old mum,
One year on.

Kathy was a difficult one,
That's something I should tell,
Born in the years before the war,
Only child of Harold and Nell.
They lived behind his plumbing shop,
And seemed to do quite well,
Then Adolf got ambitious, so
The whole world went to hell.

One year on,
One year on.
My old mum,
One year on.

She was their little princess,
For whom they had high hopes,
But their ambitions for her got crushed
When she discovered blokes.
Wilfully she moved away,
And left them in the lurch,
She said that she was learning to teach
But married a bloke she met at church.

One year on,
One year on.
My old mum,
One year on.

Against parents' advice popped out a kid,
But struggled for another,
It took nine years but finally
My sister had a brother.
We all played happy(ish) families,
For more than thirty years,
But illness took my dad too young,
Leaving memories and tears.

One year on,
One year on.
My old mum,
One year on.

Left alone at fifty three,
She lived nearly three decades more,
Never really well off,
But not exactly poor.
She always hoped that she might find
Another companion (or "something more")
Church and holidays gave her happiness,
And I probably should have done more.

One year on,

One year on.

My old mum,

One year on.

The last few years were brutal,
There ain't no ifs nor buts.
Her final boyfriend upped and died
And sickness seized her guts.
Back and forth to hospital,
Things seemed to get worse and worse,
And about this time one year ago,
Life had written her last verse.

One year on,

One year on.

My old mum,

One year on.

One year on,
One year gone.
My old mum,
Dead and gone.

A TINY RANTETTE

About, ooh, eight to ten months ago now, with regard to my late mother's Estate, we exchanged various documents between ourselves and various companies with regard to her finances.

Documents were requested, sent, and returned, and letters were received informing us of what we did or did not owe, and what was owed to us.

All of this was handled through my address, and everything proceeded, well, if not exactly swimmingly, then at least according to relatively low expectations.

Then, later on, we came to do the tax return and discovered that one of my mother's pensions (Lloyds, because why should I disguise them?) had failed to supply a final statement, other than a letter pointing out that they didn't owe us anything.

This was in May.

I rang them and was informed that they would have sent out a P60 to her last address despite the fact that they had been using my address in all of our correspondence since they had seen the deed of probate and death certificate ("different department" they claimed) and, of course, by then the Flat had been sold.

Very patiently, I requested a statement of account, and then waited until it was getting a little bit ridiculous, made a guess off the bank statements as advised by the tax form helpline, and sent the wretched form off anyway.

Today, THREE MONTHS later, a rather anonymous letter arrived from Lloyds acknowledging my request but pointing out that they couldn't possibly supply such information without being sent a deed of probate to view.

And so the merry dance begins again.

Sadly, (or perhaps wisely) the letter also failed to have a contact telephone number printed upon it so that I could ring them up and shout at them.

Idiots!

So, instead, I find myself ranting at you, oh loyal reader, in the hope that this will calm me down a tad, for which I hope that you will forgive me.

There we are...!

Rant over...!

And all of the veins in my temples still seem to be intact.

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.