When I was very young, my mum took me to Italy, which was on my request. I think we must have been learning about Italy at school as I wanted to go to Venice and to Pompeii, so we went to these places.
When we got to Pompeii, I remember seeing the casts of people and animals petrified, frozen in time as they ran from what must have been like Hell on Earth. My mum was not impressed by the exhibits and I remember asking her why. She replied that she wanted to see what life had been like in ancient times and was hoping to see the people out trading in the streets and getting on with their daily business, but instead here they all were screaming in pain or laying on the floor dying.
How inconsiderate of them.
So when I saw this postcard in the charity shop many years later, I had to have it. I remember saying that perhaps my mum should have used her imagination to put the pieces together, so in this piece, I wanted to recreate the scene to bring the calcified dog back to life. My half of the postcard imagines seeing the dog through a window, playing in the green grass.
Maybe I should have drawn a picture at the time. Maybe she was joking. I’ll never know, but it’s a memory I hold dear.
Got to say I much prefer the dog-playing-in-the-green-grass image as one to remember. But then I always like to look on the bright side.
We could be heading for a very interesting publication here – ‘My Life in Postcards’ – you’ve got time to write a book, surely? Or maybe it’s a third 365?
I would love to write that book one day Stripygoose. It may take a while to get started at this rate though…