my father's son

(my grandad's wall)

last week was the second week in a row that i had ventured out of the house in a sleeveless top in my neverending quest to defeat this stupid t-shirt sun tan.

i spent a day out and about wandering around with my Dad, it started as a walk from mine to his which usualy takes 15 minutes but instead the whole journey took somewhere around 4 hours or so, possibly more.

we set off after a slice of watermelon each and as i'd already shown him a couple of houses that i'd seen on the market i thought we might as well take in a couple of detours so he could see a couple more that i may or may not have been interested in.

and so a quick walk turned into a longer walk which turned into a trip down memory lane for the both of us as we cut through wastelands and fields, A-road neighbouring forests and dirt tracks, chatting the whole way, about places my Dad used to take me and my brother when we were younger, and places that my Dad had been when he was younger.

we contemplated past times and good times and ended up walking in a very non-direct way to Cheshunt where my Dad grew up. we stopped at the corner of the graveyard my grandparents are buried in and from there my dad pointed out the resting place of a school caretaker he once helped out when he was a child.

we went where things used to be, we found the back garden wall that my grandad had built and some friendly neighbourhood types chatted with us and helped fill in some of the blanks in my Dad's memory.


the time spent together is so much more than i could ever realy sum up in this meandering blog post and meant a hell of a lot more to me than i ever realised it could, but like last months wedding it reminds you who your family realy are and when you put so much focus on looking forward it's sometimes good to look back.