HIDDEN TREASURES
I though I must have been mistaken, I was only young, and sometimes your child mind maybe exaggerates reality. When mum was first taken into the home my brother asked me if there was anything I wanted from her cottage. The only thing I wanted was a scrap book my dad had stuck some photos in. There was an assortment of pictures, but the ones that I recalled were of the time we visited my dads parents at Stakeford. This will sound a little harsh, but I always dreaded visiting my grandparents up north, there was several reasons and I will note a few and maybe you will see it from my point of view.
Firstly, I found it very difficult to understand what they were saying to me, and they didn't particularly go out of their way to assit me.
It was a large old house with a fusty digestive biscuit sort of smell. Then there was the bedroom, and in my bedroom, on the dresser, was a large glass dome which contained a stuffed owl on a branch, holding a dead/stuffed field mouse in one of its claws. (I was so terrified of this dam thing , I must confess to once wetting the bed at the age of five, for fear of getting out of bed and passing the wide eyed bird of prey. Now don't you go telling anyone about that mishap).
My grandmother used to read peoples fortunes and all the other kids use to call her Stinky -Witchy, and treated me very warily. Maybe they feared being turned into a toad!!!
Well joy upon joy, this particular time of visiting my grandparents, my special mum let it slip whilst on the train traveling there, (and dad was getting the drinks), that she to felt the same way. I think it was the smell and the spookiness that bothered her most (she never confessed to bed wetting), and now that I was twelve (all grown up), she felt able to share this with me, and plans were made that we would get dad to take us out each day. So everyday we went to NEWBIGGIN beach. I had a fantastic time, dad and I made Barb into a mermaid, we played football and had ice creams galore. It was one of the happiest times of my life.
Now I felt sure that dad had stuck these photos in a book, I could clearly recall the little captions he wrote after each photo. There was one of me stood in the sea and he had written "its not cold dad, honest". Search as he might, my brother couldn't find the book, and I was sure it wasn't a figment of my imagination.
The other thing that I asked for was a photo of my father 'piping' the Queen andAdmiral onto his ship.
After dads death, mum sat many a time and told me story that, just pre the visit dad had to answer a call of nature, and in the rush to get back to his post he caught his private parts in the zipper. Being the 'Officer and Gentleman' that he was, and despite the agony he was in, he stood proud (no pun intended) and carried out his duties. This picture had also had gone missing, and my brother and sister-in-law could not recall either of the items.
Back to the present day. Mums room had to be cleared out. There were sadly few material goods to show for the years mum had lived on this planet, but at the bottom of the wardrobe a small blue case was found. Within it were several artifacts of my fathers, some old newspaper cuttings of the Queens first born, then her son and other children (dad loved the Royals, hence my name).
Moving things out of the case, my brother pulled out a damp stained photo frame and there it was. The picture of my dad gritting his teeth looking as handsome as ever, carrying out his duties. It wasn't a fiction of my memory after all, and neither was the scrap-book holding all those wonderful memories of my childhood. There it was, at the very bottom of the case, hidden like a pearl within its shell. I am putting just a few of these priceless treasures on my blog, I know that they will never mean as much to anyone else as they do to me, but I want to thank my mum for keeping safe the memories of her her twelve year old step-daughter.
