Gran At Large

The trouble with my husband is that he never does anything by halves. If he sets out to do something, he does it with all his heart and soul. For instance, I know only too well that if I'm getting the house ready for visitors and he miraculously offers to clean a room, it won't just be a matter of hoovering and dusting. Before I know it, he'll have all the books off the bookshelves and be treating the wood with teak oil; he'll be rearranging the furniture; he'll be washing the light bulbs, I shouldn't wonder. Which is all very well, but at that rate, your guests will have come and gone long before the room's ready for them.

So I should have known sorting the photos wouldn't be just a gentle leisure activity to keep him out from under my feet. On the contrary, he now makes regular appearances at my side with a handful of photos and a "When were these taken?" Or, sometimes, "Where on earth is this?"

As a result, I end up abandoning my own work to root through old diaries and letters, often with no result at all, except more puzzlement. "I wish we'd kept the paperwork for all the cars we've ever had," he said one day. He's got a point. Then at least we'd know that if the Morris Minor's in the picture, it was between 1971 (even I can remember that - it was our first car, after all) and whenever it ended its life, held together with wire and string, providing shelter for chickens in a farmer's field. And just when was it we bought the blue Daihatsu? Or the horrible red Jetta that kept breaking down?

Easter Day gave him the opportunity to bring a few more people in on the "When was this taken?" quest. My younger brother and his wife joined us, so a selection of photos in which they feature was brought out.

"I never wore a jumper like that!" exclaimed my brother, appalled by the broad purple stripes. "Oh yes you did!" crowed his wife. Well, 1981 wasn't a great fashion year. Or was it 1982? Or even 1984?

We were worrying away at the subject for a good hour. The child dimly seen in the photo - is that nephew number one or number two? And what about the 'L' plates on the car - our car, that is. When did I pass my test? Then there's my brother's car. If it's the Maestro, it's before 1983, if it's the Montego, it's after - or was it the other way round?

All the time, I could see the spirit of my dear departed mother-in-law sitting there on the sofa shaking her head and saying: "I told you always to write the date on the back."

Our daughter was with us for Easter, too. She was actually delighted to find her room full of newly-filled photograph albums. She spent ages browsing through them. "They're like a real family diary," she said.

She's right. Her dad hasn't just selected the few really good photos. Many of them are pretty poor. But they're all part of the story. Take that one of our teenage son and daughter on holiday in Scotland - they're standing on a country road, and some sort of discussion's going on. It didn't mean a lot to us, but it made our daughter laugh. It was, she said, the time she (the sporty one of the family) was supposed to be doing daily training, holiday or not. So she bullied her brother into jogging with her; in fact, she's doing it right there in front of the camera. You can see resistance in every line of his body.

She did have one complaint about the photograph albums, though. "I'd like a bit more explanation," she said. For instance, there was the camping holiday in France, with all four of us together. The next set of pictures shows me and her dad, his parents, and a visiting auntie. But where were she and her brother? "Were we still at school? Were we at Uni? You should have written it in alongside."

It's bad enough having to work out where the photos were taken and when. But if we also have to discover what all the people not in the photos were doing too, what was happening when their photos weren't being taken - now I do draw the line at that!

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