Rummaging in the past

It was a wet afternoon. I'd had a mail from my cousin who'd just been in Pretoria, South Africa, looking for the place where our shared grandparents had lived more than a hundred years ago, and I'd realised - from discovering some old post cards that I'd not looked at before - that I'd misread the name of the street in which they lived. So far, so not really this blip. But then I found this card which my Grandfather had sent to Miss Crane, to whom he was not yet married, with the news that he'd arrived safely in Africa.

The card shows the ship he sailed on - the Union Castle Line Royal Mail Steamer Gaika. The date is clearly visible on the right hand side of the photo  - 23/08/05. In good time for the start of a new term at the school for boys in which he, a young teacher from Glasgow, would be taking up the post of depute headmaster. His not-yet-wife, my grandmother, was still teaching in Cowdenbeath. The story goes that he sent her an uncut Cape ruby to have made into a ring and that she then went out to marry him.

It seems aeons ago. That ship, the thought of the long sail, the lack of direct communication to which we've become so accustomed, the trust people had to put in one another and in their own luck to take them to far away places, the courage these colonial adventurers showed - all these things make me wonder. My mother was born in Pretoria, coming home when she was two - a year before the outbreak of the Great War. History.

But I can remember my grandparents, recall my grandmother reminiscing about visits to "Jo'burg" which was clearly a place to visit, a cut above Pretoria. They were real people, part of my life. And sometimes, as this afternoon, they become very close again.

My extra picture was taken in the rain of early evening - too much browsing among dusty photos gave me a headache and a walk was called for. Clearly autumn is here...