Favourite photo meme

I have been tagged by Audrey Hepburn. Oh no, apparently it was Emily, over at Maternal Tales, but blimey she looks like Audrey Hepburn in her wedding photo. This is a lovely meme, started by Tara at Sticky Fingers who always has beautiful photos on her blog – she must have a fantastic camera, or just be really good at taking pictures, of course. It’s fairly simple, just pop up your favourite photo and say why it’s your favourite photo.

Well, actually, that’s quite difficult. I have a lot of favourite photos. As I was thinking about this meme, I realised that pretty much every photo I wanted to post was one with my dad in it. And that, I think, is one of the great things about photos. Of course, it’s lovely to capture beautiful landscapes and stunning monuments or breath-taking sunsets, but photographs of people are particularly special and really come into their own when those people are no longer with you. Which is why I’m putting these photos up…

I love this photo of my dad and mum on the beach. I think they look so young and carefree and happy, and rather cool, too.

This is a collage of three photos of my dad holding babies. I’ve put them in the wrong order and don’t have time to go and fix it, so… on the left he’s holding my sister, Eva, in the middle, he’s holding me and on the right he’s holding Rosemary. When we were putting together photos to show on the big screen at his wake, we noticed that his posture and look is pretty much identical in all the photos, spanning a period of 33 years. I just wish we could add one of him holding Eleanor.

And this one is really special to me, for fairly obvious reasons. It’s my wedding day and my dad’s walking me down the aisle. You can’t tell from the picture, but he was walking far too fast and I was saying ‘Papa. Slow down!’ You also can’t tell from the picture, but we were actually late. Everyone had been delivered to the registry office by the minibus and it had come back to get us, and then we’d got stuck behind a bunch of marching bands. Luckily, Chris waited for us. I look at this photo a lot and it makes me happy, though it also makes me sad that my sister won’t have her own photo of Papa walking her down the aisle when her time comes.

RIP Brian John Goddard, 1945-2007. We miss you, Papa.