Nostalgia

Well here's a strange thing. My brother was recently contacted by the people who bought my parents house 23 years ago. They'd been clearing out the large old barn and had found something! It was a cap and peering at the label inside they had been ably to make out a name -Joe Crabtree Taylor, and had an inkling that that was my mother's surname.  It was and this cap belonged to her father, my grandpa Joe.  How it had survived all those years in a damp corner of the barn and how we never saw it I don't know but it has quite a history. It's a forage cap from the Royal Flying Corps (predecessor of the RAF)  which Grandpa Joe joined in 1915, aged 19. Rather marvellously I have a photo of him wearing it!  My uncle, Joe's son (now 93) , told us that the cap was called a forage cap because you could take it off and use it as a carrier bag should you find yourself in alien territory - useful to hold a pillaged chicken or whatever you foraged for your supper! I've written about Grandpa Joe before. After the first World War he earned his living by wing walking. The extra shows him above the skies in Barnstable, 1922. A very special chap whom I remember fondly.