On Portobello Sands

** SPOILER ALERT 'On Chapel Sands' by Laura Cumming **

Although I don't think it's really much of a spoiler depending on how you view the book - memoir or mystery. Anyway, I finished reading it today, in preparation for our Book Group Zoom which unfortunately has been postponed as one of our number couldn't make it tonight. Although there is a very specific mystery at the heart of the story in many ways it was the more mundane family memoir that I found most interesting. There was a fair bit of discussion of art and photography in the book too, looking for evidence of family history in the old photographs that have survived, trying to piece together the story from a handful of pictures. Without being able to ask the photographer why certain pictures were kept, whether there were many more that didn't make the cut at some point. The way in which the family photographer doesn't appear in many pictures as they are usually the one with the camera. Something that I became very aware of a couple of years ago when putting together a photo book for my father's eightieth birthday. He was the one that took the family photographs, at least until I got my first camera. There is one old photograph in the book that stands out from the rest. The writer describes its painterly quality over several pages and speculates how her grandfather (George, the same name as my maternal grandfather) must have taken the shot. As written there is no other evidence of the whys and wherefores of this picture but the author makes it into a significant event, demonstrating an artistic sensibility her grandfather rarely had the opportunity to exercise in his life. She does say there are no other similar pictures and given the cost of the camera that was probably used it was likely borrowed. I can't be the only person reading her words to make a different inference. Rather than her grandfather borrowing the camera couldn't another photographer, someone he had at work met or an older friend, have come along to take the photograph, bringing a more sophisticated camera, and most likely an artistic eye? Nevertheless, despite a few nagging 'unwanted questions' I found it an interesting read, with echoes of my own life, as I expect many people will find in its pages. The author herself was brought up in Edinburgh (although I don't recognise her description of Goldenacre - 'unlovely, granite district' - for me it is playing fields, big houses and red sandstone tenements) and there are other connections. My paternal grandfather worked as groundcrew in WWII and I think he was stationed in Lincolnshire. In fact my uncle was born in Skegness towards the end of the war. The tales of family life reminded me of family stories I have heard too. Only the other day when I was chatting on the phone to my father he was talking about seeing a V1 rocket flying overhead when he was a child, hearing the engine cut out as it fell to the ground some way off. Little connections to the sweep of history that I presume most families have. Like the crossing of paths with famous people. In the book there is mention of an older relative seeing Tennyson one day. I am sure there was some correspondence between my grandfather and George Bernard Shaw, although maybe that is just another family tale....