Did I mention the fall I had yesterday,it is a common occurrence and I usually bounce, at the time it was quite a while before I managed to get up but I thought that apart from a bruise of two all was well. During the night an increase of pain made me aware that I could have a problem and this morning I could barely move my leg and my ankle was swollen=en alarmingly. Further investigation revealed that my shoulder and wrist were also swollen and some truly spectacular bruises had appeared all down my right side.
Instead of attending a wedding I spent hours in A and E being x rayed, thankfully the damage is slight and I should be mobile again when the swellings go down.
Having the rest of the day free and with nothing to do I decided to sort through some old photographs. In one of the boxes I came across a wonderful photo of my father ans suddenly the day when it was taken came rushing back and I scrabbled about in the box because knew that there were more photos of that day.
It was 1974 and a very hot August day, for reasons I cannot remember we all decided to walk down the old farm track to the trout pools with a picnic. The whole family including Gran who lived with us and a young friend from a neighbouring farm. Pa and I had just returned form two long years in Coventry and I was revelling in being home again. I remember everything ,the chirping grasshoppers the rising heat ,the woods in the distance mysteriously blue and shimmering slightly. The walk was more than a country mile but we laughed and joked all the way, my Father was in fine form that day strong ,and suntanned and jolly.
Surrounded by woods and fields in a long valley were two trout pools fed by a small and cert pretty stream, further down a twelve foot water fall splashed in to a pool, always ice cold and shaded by trees. My brothers and I had played there as children and some how it seemed much smaller since I had been away and yet ever so dear to me.
One by one we shed our clothes and jumped in to the water, I had the camera which Pa had given to me for a wedding gift and I snapped away using up two rolls of film. These photographs taken light-heartedly on a hot summers day long ago constitute some of the best I have of my family and the memory of the day shines the brighter as I look through them.
Faced with a camera my father would always strike a pose and rather like those dreadful Victorian family pictures the personalities of the sitters were lost and the terrifying fixed stare that took its place. That day everyone was having so much fun that no one noticed me clicking away. The pictures of my father show the fun and sheer love of live that made him so wonderful. The photo of my mother chewing gum for which she had developed a craze, when she saw it she said she looked like a cow chewing the cud, she never chewed gum again.
My Gran plump and bossy, presiding over the tea things and my two brothers so different from one another yet both so dear to me.
Each photograph plunged me still deeper into the happiness of that perfect day,a tiny moment in my life when everything was perfect. My brother Tom diving fearlessly into the deep water and my brother Ritchie thoughtfully watching the dragon flies which darted over the smaller pool further down the valley, and the girl from the farm down the lane who was ,secretly,she thought in love with my brother,happy with the attention her swimsuit was getting.
Suddenly I felt that I would give anything to hug my father and to feel his strong arms pick me up just once more, and such a deep longing almost too great to be borne to be that carefree young girl again,for just a few moments. I packed away the photographs and closed the box.
Sitting in the garden a little later sticking the labels on to jars of home made jam I suddenly realised how lucky I was to have such wonderful memories. How lucky to have a country childhood with endless fields and woods to play in on those seemingly endless summer days.
My Father was only fifty six when he died not so very long after that golden summer day, to have the memory of him laughing and happy is really a great joy and not a thing to be sad about.
I have never stopped missing the man who always saw the funny side of things, who always had the answer to a problem and who never got discouraged no matter what, but he is in my heart forever.
Quite suddenly today when I had seemed to be surrounded by problems and felt tired with the struggle , I thought of him again and somehow I knew that no matter what happened I would be strong enough to carry on, I am after all my fathers daughter.
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