Armed with a bag of cream cakes, I headed over to my Dads and Junes today, the mission? retrieve the box of family photos that has remained in the dark loft space for 20 + years and today was the day that sunlight was to shine on them again.
In true military fashion, I was instructed to text once I was close to their house. As requested I sent off the text announcing my arrival within the next 5 minutes, thus prompting June to walk down several flights of stairs from their flat to meet me at the main entrance of their building and together we headed to the ground floor gardens and retrieved the step ladders from their small storage shed. June warning me that my Dad was a bit upset as he hates not being able to carry out such tasks these days, I guess the one downside of being 89…………..
With the ladder in place, cream cakes in the fridge, we debated to eat them before retrieving the photos but a majority vote was drawn and the cakes were put in the fridge for after the retrieval. This actually turned out to be the right choice judging by the smaller than average loft hatch, the low roof supports and the confirmed space to manoeuvre within the loft, the extra calories wouldn’t have sat favourable to all present.
Before the ascent, I was dressed for the operation, a plastic blue body suit and face mask, My dad advising me it was for safety reasons due to the fibreglass found in the loft insulation, although he often confused fibreglass with asbestos, i put this down to his age and anyway, I was dressed for all hazards.
Taking careful instructions from both my Dad and June, I squeezed my 5`6 body through the hatch and after several minutes of my dad insisting the box in question would be on my right and with my eye firmly fixed to a empty loft void on my right, he finally shouted for me to look to my left as he suddenly remembered a workman carrying out some repairs several years prior and concluded the workman must have moved all the boxes and failed to return them to the original position, thus prompting a verbal reminder to contact this poor workman and demand he return to finish off his work properly.
Once I was directed in the right direction, the said box of photos was located and after a few minutes of careful handling the slightly larger box out of the slightly smaller loft hatch, the box was sitting in the living room ready to reveal the memories.
It wasn’t the plan to look through the photos there but for me to take the box home and sort through in my own time, thinking that my tears would flow at seeing and reliving memories, including seeing pictures of my mum who had died when I only 16.
Instead, the three of us spent a very happy few hours reliving the memories, laughing at the fashions, and disbelief in the choices of clashing colours of shirts and shorts I was so often dressed in and topped off with an equally clashing pattern tie on elastic.
June came to the rescue on more than several occasions when presented with old family pictures trying to identify the person/persons, remarkable the story of my Dad and June growing up together, my grandparents and Junes family living next door to each other but my Dad marrying my Mum and June marrying her late husband Frank.
Within a short space of Frank passing away, my Mum passed away and over the following months and years, June and my Dad, joined together, giving each other comfort with the in-depth knowledge of each others families, the evidence is in photos of my young birthday parties aged from 4 onwards with me sitting next to my now step sister Julie.
My Dad insisted that he would drive me the 4 miles home rather than me carry the box on the bus, I agreed after remembering Junes comment about my Dad being upset that he couldn’t fetch the ladder on his own, He needed to feel useful and helpful rather than helpless and so he drove me home after cups of tea and cream cakes were consumed.
I listened as he assured me that a call would be made to the workman demanding he returned to the loft, I smiled at the thought of any such conversation as I had found the invoice for repairs work carried out and dated 16 years ago tucked into the box of photos, I was hopeful that the mentioned workman had done a better job at removing the asbestos tiles as stated on the invoice than he had done at moving back the boxes to the left side of the loft.
And so back at home and with a bottle of red wine opened, i opened the first photo album and saw the family holiday photos that sparked my passion for travel at 3 years old.
Daren Ellis Global Travels 