27th September 2024, one year since the Sycamore of the Sycamore Gap was cut down by a criminal act and 90 years since my mother was born. The two things are both related and not related. I can’t claim to have a huge relationship with this tree, as others do, but somewhere in the photo albums of my parents there are a few pictures of me at varying heights and ages standing under this tree.  The photos would be horribly aged in the way that mass market photo development from the late sixties and seventies are.  Bleached out colours with a brown tinge. There may be a black and white image of me at age 5 standing under the tree.

Regardless I made the image at the top of this blog of a lone woman under the tree from images I found in a magazine.

Every year we would make the journey from North East Essex, close to Cambridge on this map, to Glasgow to visit my paternal grandfather. Sycamore Gap was where we would stop and have a few hours out of the journey and a late breakfast. My Dad always liked to leave home at 2 a.m for these adventures. The journeys stopped when my Grandfather died and I last visited the tree at about age 15 on a school trip to Hadrian’s wall. That aspect of my family is entirely lost to me apart from their names on my family tree. One stands out.

Why did me and my mum never discuss what a cool name her Grandfather had?

A tree and a family tree are the flimsiest of connections for this blog. Underneath the canopy of both trees is the thought that I never talked enough to my parents while I had them. Do any of us?