Cameos.

I love being  here (current location: Up North) and meeting people from the Valleys. We get a lot of tourists in the Lake District, and often enough Cumbria meets Cambria. This is marvelous to me. I'm in my suddenly-slightly-homesick element. I'm conversing with folk about the new John Lewis in Cardiff - I've never physically been there, but I make myself its fan to get that sense of mutuality. Its like being part of an exclusive club, like being in on a secret others around you can't know, like divulging the codeword.

I value the cameo that these people make in my little corner of the world.

There is a photographer based in Torfaen who snaps candid shots of local scenes. Hilariously, on a random search of his online portfolio, I stumble across the image of a man staring into the window of an electrical shop in Griffithstown. The man is none other than my dad, observing all the Shiny Things of Wonder within. Hehe, busted:




And and and, surely not content with simply capturing one generation of the family as they potter about the Valley, what else do I later espy but an image of my very own Granddad, the unwitting star of a photo that appeared in a local free publication, 'The Citizen'. Here my Granddad is "exploring" Pontypool Park at a dramatic 45 degree angle:

 
(Images (c) Adrian Reilly, 2005-2010, from www.pbase.com.)

"I thought there was somebody hiding in those bushes, I did," my Granddad responds to this in his wonderful old accent.