Sweet Nostalgia ...

I have been sorting out books on the stairs bookcase and found this old copy of The Faber Book of Comic Verse though I am not sure of the publication date it is at least 1940's. It was a gift from my mother to my father just after the war, on his birthday 27th April 1947. There can't have been even an idea of my brother yet and still they were dreaming of their new life together and all it's possibilities ... My mother, the nurturing earth mother contentedly coping with 16 children all looking like my father with only one daughter! My father lounging around taking it easy smoking his pipe. All photos of him then had a pipe in mouth or hand. Some of the in jokes are forever lost, never to be explained sadly, like the sandwich tree, and the even more mysterious mitre plant ... and "PIP when 306" ?

It is a great treasure this little drawing and good to share with the outside world. Drawing in books? ABSOLUTELY!

Here they are on a picnic before I was born with my brother John and sister Naomi ....

and John and Naomi with my mother.