Reflective

Today the song is a song that makes me sad.

Many years ago this little girl had a hero. He was called Dad. She would follow him around everywhere - to milk the cows, to feed the calves, to check the sheep...on the tractor, to the garden...
One day he went somewhere that she couldn't follow. He changed from the tanned, muscled farmer to a pale, weak man who smelt of hospital and chemotherapy and not of hay and fresh air. This little girl's world fell apart and it took many years to mend it again.

Joan Baez's voice was heard a lot in our house when I was a little girl and this song reminds me of that time and, without fail, makes me sad.

This photo appeared in the Farmers' Weekly at some time in the late 1970s - I was so proud :-)

My father survived the cancer and is now re-married, retired, happy and healthy. I still hate hospitals and still have a tendency to think that tall men who smell of hay and animal poo are 'proper men', anything else is a pale imitation.