One of the benefits of dealing with everything following a death is that one has lots of time to rummage through old letters and postcards (I was more diligent in sending them from my travels than I remember: I'm so touched to find that my parents kept them), and of course photographs. My father was from Leeds - his father died when he was four (gassed in WW1, so the family story went, and his lungs didn't survive pneumonia); and after a few years trying to make ends meet, Ray and his mother and brother moved first to Derby, and then to live with his maternal grandparents and aunt in Birmingham.
Meanwhile, the men on my mother's side of the family had either run off (my grandfather and uncle); or died in WW1. Although Ray didn't meet my mother there, she was from near Leeds - Batley, about thirteen miles south, and so I quite definitely have a lineage of strong Yorkshirewomen on both sides. I don't remember this photo well - and I certainly don't remember it being taken, though I do recollect being rather keen on those check trousers. It was taken in Huddersfield in 1956 - and really looks to be a longer time ago than that, even. My mother's holding my hand; her mother is next to her; then the tall stern woman is my Auntie Jess. I bet none of them envisaged that fiercely independent looking small person (and surely that fierce independence - let's not call it stubbornness - came from Ray) ending up in Los Angeles - a very long way from this Yorkshire doorstep.
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