Reminders of my Father.

Today as I walked around Carlisle I came across two reminders of my father.

• There is an old 18th Century house and one of the information boards pointed out the ornate lead down pipes. My father had two "London City Guilds" plumbing text books. (I had stored them while I was in Australia in the 70's and they got damaged) In those text books there was information about how to make those type of downpipes. Plumbers, at one time, did all sorts of fancy work including the lead work in stained glass windows, and dad's old historical text books had training data about all this type of work. Dad did a lot of work with lead pipes in his time as a plumber, I remember helping him "wipe" lead joints. He would have been interested in these pipes.
• Secondly we visited the Carlisle Castle where there is a bit of a military museum. In a shed I noticed an artillery gun. I went over and looked at it. I said out loud to my wife, "I wonder if it is a 25 pounder?" A man standing near said, "Yes" and pointed out the plate on the chassis that indicated it. My dad fired and was in charge of 25 pounder artillery units during WWII. He would have been interested.

Sometimes something makes you miss someone even when they have been gone 46 years!