Remembered

Going to my Grandad's funeral a couple of weeks ago has meant I've been doing a lot of remembering of both my Grandads since I was very close to both and they are both now gone.

A strong memory of my Mum's Dad is listening to his war stories. I have his medals now and I felt an image of his Dunkerque medal depicts some of intense, formative, experiences he went through and passed on to me through his stories. His waited in line for an hour, with water up to his chest, only to see the ship blown out of the water and then go back to the beach and start again.

He went on to fight with the Desert Rats, was captured at Tobruk, escaped from an Italian prisoner of war camp, was hidden by my Great Grandfather in the mountains near Palma (my Great Grandad was an Italian resistance leader) where he met my Nan. There is apparently a shrine in the village (Rovere) built in memory of my Great Grandad and when my Italian is more fluent I'm going to visit - now that will be some blip!

OK, image taken with: diffused day light for lighting; a trusty candle with a flash hood to pick out the left edge, due to my own ineptitude the hood now has a charred hole in it :-(

And for all you Scots in Blipfoto, cos there seems to be an awful lot of you, the sand is from Iona.

A younger version of myself brought some home in a some Iona pottery for Ruth, for some reason I thought this was a romantic way to woo her ..... bizarrely it seems to have worked!