went to grimsby and cleethorpes a couple of weeks ago for the first proper visit in five years. i wanted to see my wider family somewhere other than at funerals, especially since my aunt's sudden illness and death in the spring. that's my grandmother, father and his sister gone since 2005. i didn't want to blog about my aunt's death at the time. all this has changed the shape of the family considerably, and we're regrouping, so to speak, around a different set of connections. the children of my four cousins are all teenagers now, so there is another layer approaching adulthood. and the latest family addtion is my niece elisabeth, born last week!
as for the photos of grimsby and cleethorpes, there's nowhere deader than a seaside town on a weekday out of season in cold weather. it's easy to produce those empty scenes that i seem to specialise in ;) the traces of my childhood are still around, but fading. places go, or you lose them. it was strange and difficult to pass my grandmother's old house and not be able to walk in like the last and every other time. also hard to pass asda, where my aunt worked for so many years. and even now, my sense of scale for the town is that of a child, and i'm always nonplussed by how much shorter distances are than in my mind. the fact that i think of the old sea wall as curving over my head, gives you some idea.
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