Book selected: National Museum of Wales Catalogue of Oil Paintings
New title: There he is, happy...
This book suggested itself to me because it connects with my family on a number of levels: my mother is Welsh, as are my children; I have lived and worked in Wales for almost twenty years; and the book was published in 1955, the year of my parents’ marriage. I have added to the book a series of images taken from some old photographs my father gave me when I was a child. These small, precious black-and-white objects are still in their original folder from the processors in Kowloon, dated 1953. Dad took them when he was in the RAF, stationed at various locations in the Far East during the 1950s. They show a mixture of subjects: local buildings, places of interest, and snapshots of his colleagues flying and maintaining aircraft, as well as relaxing during their time off. Many are carefully labelled in Dad’s neat handwriting, the same handwriting that appears on short notes, birthday cards and the unasked-for cheques he sometimes gives us to help with large or unexpected bills.
One picture in particular stands out: it shows Dad standing proud but unsmiling in front of a Dakota, arms folded, chin raised and hair neatly brushed back from his forehead, as he still wears it today. He looks handsome, strong and optimistic – but most startlingly, he looks so very much like me. On the back of this photograph my mother has written ‘Oct 1957’: two years before I was born. I thought of the vast differences between Wales and Hong Kong, of my newly married parents-to-be on opposite sides of the world, and of my own unimaginable (to them) journey from birth to middle age. There is a poem by Wendy Cope which evokes beautifully the poignancy of looking at one’s parents photographed in their youth, and I chose some lines from this poem for the front cover of the book.
email : celia.jackson@newport.ac.uk
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