Dad

Today is the next anniversary of my dad departing his last platform. The 22nd. They're mounting up now, it's so long ago, time has passed and keeps passing.

I write a thing on here every year to mark the day, and to try and capture the past as it gets further away. One day I'll forget these titbits, I've forgotten so much already, and then this will be what is left.

I don't have much that was his, that's what happens as time passes, and he wasn't big on possessions. Today I have stumbled across a box of tickets that he kept marking his adventures on the railway, his travels.

No, he wasn't a railway man, he was a rail enthusiast, man and boy. He was a teacher, a mathematician and an organist. I think these 3 often go together.

The 'big ticket' in the middle of this lot is him, then a 32-year-old, and 11 children aged between 14 and 18, returning to Rawtenstall from London on a school trip - he was a teacher at Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School.

Wonder what the trip was for? Science Museum (a favourite), something musical, who knows, that detail is lost. The children on the trip could well all still be here, one may be a blipper, but who knows who they were or where they are now. Time passes.

The station at Rawtenstall is now part of a preserved railway, threatened now with being seized to be an extension of the Metrolink system. Would he approve or would his passion for steam prevent him?

The school is still there, my daughter, his granddaughter that he sadly never met, has just left the 6th form. It still looks a bit like Hogwarts.

All the tickets in this box tell a tale, some that we don't know now. In a previous dip into it I realised I was probably conceived in North Wales, in the '6-week holiday'. Both he and mum were teachers. It's a box of wonder.

People pay great money for ticket collections, but if I sold them, I'd lose these links. Links to my dad, things that make me smile.