Something a bit different

Yesterday was quite a busy day: Mr U-t-B went into work for a short time for a meeting - first day back after all this time, though he has been doing some work from home;  I went into work to check up on my work hours - things tend to go a bit haywire at this time of year, so often my lessons get cancelled or need re-arranging; we went visiting  - I think you can guess where...the new grandad wanted a cuddle with his beautiful granddaughter (and milk, bread and kitchen roll was needed in her household!);  and then my parents came visiting with my second cousin who is here from the U.S.A., en route from Heathrow where they'd picked up my aunt who had just arrived, through the Chilean ash cloud (or rather, round the side of it) from the Falkland Islands.  It had taken her seven days to get here, yet she still managed to look as fresh as a daisy!

As I was therefore able to hand my Dad his Father's Day present, I can now show it on here.  I always find it hard to come up with presents for the men in the family and wanted to come up with something different from the usual book, CD or Amazon voucher.  So, having seen so many lovely old photos recently, I hoped that this would go down well...

A picture of my Dad, with my sister, in a frame I made specially for him. In my mind the photo was taken on his first Father's Day (just a few years back...), though I may not be right.  Whether I'm right or not, he does have that chuffed-to-bits look of a new parent, so it's a lovely photo.

The frame is a plain one covered in stamps.

Stamps from countries he has lived in or visited (I didn't know them all - he used to be in the mercahnt navy so is widely travelled!)...

Stamps with picures of things he's interested in (naval history, not dancing girls!)...

I even managed to find a stamp of Iguazu, where he was meant to go on honeymoon(though they didn't actually get there then, but many years later instead)...

 And one of the chateau at St-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, that we used to be able to see from the apartment we lived in for three years back in the late 70s and early 80s...

Stamps because I used to love looking at my Dad's boyhood stamp collection, and because he used to help me and my sister with ours.  His neat print is at the top of each of the best pages in my album...

It makes me laugh to see how I tried to copy... 

...but failed miserably!