mostly david ephgrave

Today, I found myself thinking about the changing seasons, now that Autumn draws near (not that you'd know it from the weather) and how this relates in a sense to my new house. (That's the first time I've called it that, without any caveats, which is progress.) Seasons are an obvious way to chart passing time that's illustrative of rebirth and development. They roll on endlessly, outside of our control, leaving us to adapt to them; when it gets warmer, short sleeves are prevalent, and when it's brass monkeys, out come the Winter coats.  Personally, I'm standing on the edge of real change. After twenty-one years in Hitchin (or essentially my adult life), I'm moving to a village outside it, into the closest thing to my family's spiritual home*. My grandparents bought the house in the late-1940s / early-1950s and raised my dad and his brother here, with my dad moving back when my parents separated when I was a kid. And now here I am, making it my home with ...

I'm not entirely sure if this photo's of my dad on holiday in Butlins in 1963 or me in Dreamboats and Petticoats. Barry Ephgrave (far left). Either way, it looks like a great place to be, and I love the undercurrent of causing trouble to it. I dread to think of what went on on that trip as the seven of them look let off the leash, so it's probably best that pictures can't speak. Let's just say they played a few rounds of Bingo then went home for an early night. Until recently, I'm not sure I'd seen any pictures of my dad as a youngster before my parents' wedding in 1968 when he was twenty-two, so it's been nice to stumble across them as I sort through things at his house. Seeing them is also marked by the thought that the building I'm in is where he came home to as it was where he grew up, which makes it more pleasant. It's nice to see so much of his personality intact in these pictures too, as it's like a welcome reminder ...