Many of my photos - many more than I've shown here - consist of my van standing in front of something. I feel obliged to reveal that this is genetic. I grew up touring Europe every summer with my parents and either one or two sisters, and we had a white Bedford Autosleeper motor caravan, WEL 911J (One of my talents is remembering car registrations: when prompted, I can recite the number of every vehicle my family ever had). Most of my father's photographs featured the van standing in front of something - an Alp, say, or a cathedral, or the Mairie in whatever French village we happened to be in, eating cheese and tomatoes and French bread for lunch. He always said it was to 'give it scale', but I think he was just in love with the van. And most of the pictures he took were somewhat staged: we all had to have our hair cut because he didn't like the photographs of us on the ferry to France with our hair blowing in our faces, saying we 'looked like a family of mushrooms'. And whenever he took a photo of the camp, he'd say to my Mum, 'Dustpan and brush, Joan'. Meaning that she had to clear away small annoying everyday items that would ruin the shot.
I have had cause to reflect on how the leaf does not fall far from the tree. The current photograph of me at the top of the page, for example, reveals I have exactly my father's mouth and chin, which is odd, because the lop-sided mobility of my upper lip when I'm talking is exactly my maternal grandfather's. But I have been noticing, on and off, that more and more similarities are emerging. My father had an amusingly formal turn of phrase. So this morning, on giving Bonnie three gravy bones and two Markies for breakfast, I heard myself saying 'I think you'll find these of interest'. Other common phrases are 'Is that not to your liking?' and 'Are you attempting to indicate something?' In keeping with my father's passion for education, I sometimes set her a short multiple-choice test: 'How many dogs are allowed on the sofa? Is it (a) one or (b) zero?'
I also can't eat my dinner with the cupboard doors still open in the van (Pa) or the pepper and salt within reach (ditto). Whether I'm going to use it or not, I always have to have a table napkin (at home, this has extended to actual linen, rather than a piece of kitchen roll). I have dispensed with the side plates while I'm on holiday, but have a swell of satisfaction when the washing up is done and the cloth is folded over the tap (Ma). I also, you may have noticed, personify both animals and inanimate objects to an absurd degree (also Ma). I like my van, for example, because I think of it as a wee tryer, especially up hills, and as a faithful companion. When my laptop bleeps at me I ask it what it wants. I even described those impostor mushrooms the other day as hanging about under pine trees, like some sort of gang who are plotting to mug unwary passers-by. My liking for vehicles, which my eldest sister has also inherited (she's a lorry-driver) comes from Pa - he had a particular affection for trains and buses, and I never find myself annoyed at the noise from a train. I also buy too much food and keep my cupboards full, love a bulk-buy, and am particularly partial to pickles. I think all of these things have something of the semitic. (You see? That last phrase was completely Pa.)
I have noticed, too, in this blog, I find myself saying that something I like is 'perfectly acceptable' or 'perfectly tolerable', both of which were almost top marks, coming from my Dad. I think I also have his sense of language. Ma is a grammarian, but Pa was a great lover of puns and word-play, especially international ones. He excelled in the Germanic, possibly because of his early exposure to Yiddish. I once called Bonnie 'Muschkin', in front of him, and he says 'WHAT did you call her?' So I repeated it, and he said 'That's EXACTLY the right name.' A combination of cuddliness in the first syllable and smallness in the second. Even when his dementia had set in properly, and he couldn't really form coherent thoughts into sentences, he'd start off 'I would have thought...' or 'It is indubitably the case...' which led you to expect something sensible, but the sentences often tailed off right there. Any psycholinguists reading this will be glad to know that the phrasal lexicon is alive and well. What disappears is the ability to put it together with anything freshly-minted.
When I find myself wandering round the garden (or campsite) looking at the plants, with an elderly dog plodding along behind me and a cigarette in my hand, that's Grandad - my Mum's father. I have already commented that I have his upper lip, but I also have his ears. And, like me, he was never happier than when pottering in a garden, his Senior Service cigarette held in a cupped hand: I never learned to smoke backwards like he did (I have tried it, but it seems impossible without burning yourself), but then I was never in the trenches.
So when I spent last night happily listening to two consecutive hours of Ian McKellen reading 'Little Dorrit' on Radio 7's Listen Again, I probably owe that to my Dad's extensive collection of Dickens. My CD collection is full of things like Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood: 'Call me Dolores like they do in the stories', was one of my Dad's favourite lines. There is everything of James Thurber's. There are loads of sayings that I don't know the origin of: 'Lloyd George knew my father' was one (anyone?) and we have had a debate about 'Steady the buffs', which is what he'd say when you were rushing at something - it could be something to do with trains, but it may also be military: The Buffs were also a regiment. And why would anyone call a wastebin a 'gash can'? Army? Other common sayings, in the form of advice, were 'Keep your powder dry', and 'Don't rock the boat.' My head tells me this all the time, but I mostly try to ignore it. Ma's favourites were 'Don't go at it bull at a gate' and injunctions not to wear all the new clothes you'd got at once. She also liked (a similar sentiment) 'Reculer pour mieux sauter' (Pull back to make a better jump) and I also remember that she once said to me 'Un train peut en cacher un autre' which is a sign on the French railways - meaning that one train can hide another one. Very useful when driving the van, thinking in terms of large vehicles in general. But with all this caution, Ma was also quite a brave woman: going out to France across the recently-cleared Channel in 1946 (cleared of mines, that is), she somewhere along the line acquired a brooch that said, in Old French, 'Wherever the sea goes, there go the Bretons.' I think, somewhere in her soul, lies the spirit of adventure.
Anyway, I'd like to thank everyone who's contributed DNA to the project that is me. It's the second anniversary of the day Pa died tomorrow, and I'm happily remembering him. I don't think he's in any other world, or floating about anywhere: he's in my head, which is all that matters. And so far, he thinks this trip is not at all bad. Genetically, of course, I can do nothing but agree.
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