The Salmon family. Mabel is the little girl in the middle with her hand on her mother's knee (age about 4). Circa 1897

Nana and Clem probably dressed for the fancy dress party held in 1906 to celebrate the opening of Cardiff’s City Hall in Cathays Park. (Gill Collection)

Bob and his motorbike. Circa 1912

I believe Bob is the man holding the mallet. I need to investigate this photo further.

Bob with his First World War ambulance team. Bob is standing, fourth from the left (with someone’s hand on his shoulder). Circa 1914

My grandmother, photographed at about twenty. (Croft Collection)

Bob and Nana's studio photo, presumed to have been taken on or around the time of their May 1915 wedding. (Croft Collection)

Nana (standing, on the right) at the time of her wedding. (Croft collection)

Nana's parents, Catherine Salmon - seated, Edmund Salmon - standing, holding a child, probably my mother Esme, and Nana’s blind brother Clem. I have not been able to identify the young woman. (Gill collection)

Grandma Salmon with my mother, aged about 2. (Gill collection)

My grandmother inherited 60 Richards Terrace in 1939. I lived there from my birth in 1942 until 1947. I took this photograph n 2021. The outside of the house is essentially unchanged since my childhood. (Gill collection)

Bob Croft in his thirties. (Gill Collection)

Nana’s brother Clement (right, on the cello) with his musical ensemble. (Croft Collection)

Tom Croft, aged about thirteen, in the backyard at Richards Terrace. (Croft Collection)

Esme with Jacko the greyhound. Circa 1938

My mother Esme Croft aged about twenty. This is one of several studio portraits she had taken of herself at this time. (Gill collection)

My mother, photographed at about twenty. (Gill Collection)

Bill Scobie, aged about 25. (Gill Collection)

Esme Croft, aged about twenty-one. (Gill Collection)

My father (middle), with a shipmate and Grandma Scobie in the background, 1939. (Gill Collection)

Esme and Bill on their wedding day, 1940. (Gill Collection)

The group photograph of my parents’ wedding at St Margaret’s church in February 1940. Nana and Bob stand at the bride’s left. Her maid of honor is her first cousin, Renee Clemo. The unidentified man next to the groom is a stand-in best man for Bill’s brother Stewart Scobie, an infantryman in France. Vera Pepler, Stewart’s then fiancé, later wife, is the woman on the far right. The woman standing behind the groom is Rose Torresen, Nana’s neighbor and friend. Evelyn Scobie, Bill’s mother, was probably too ill to attend. I am not sure why Esme’s brother Tom is not in the picture. It is possible he could not get leave at short notice from his job in the armaments factory. (Gill Collection)

Me at about six months. The mark left on my lip and the rash on my right hand are apparent. The rash faded as I grew older but, when I visit a new dentist I am still questioned about the growth on my upper lip. (Gill Collection)

My mother, grandmother and I (aged ~2). (Gill Collection)

Front playground of Stacy Road School. I am in the second row, second from right (next to girl in dark jumper). Circa 1947

Me, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, probably about 5 years old.

Nana, Rosie, and I, snapped in front of the bay window at 60 Richards Terrace, all wearing our fancy hats. In the picture, I look to be about seven and Rosie about three. (Gill collection)

232 Newport Road in 2021, where we lived from 1947-1959. It is essentially unchanged from my youth. The upstairs window mid-frame was once Rosie and my bedroom window. The window to the right was in our kitchen. I took this photo to show the stone wall which served me as a jungle gym. I would move over the top of the wall in a low crouch, accelerating when I went by the window to my grandmother’s kitchen. I was strictly forbidden to climb this wall as well as the brick wall that separated our property from the neighbor’s, along which I would actually run. It was on this brick wall that I used to meet up with my best friend, the boy next door, Michael Haas, pronounced Hayes. He and I never went into each other’s houses and our parents had no social contact. My guess is that this was because the Haases were German Jews. (Gill Collection)

Rosie and I sitting outside our grandmother’s scullery at the back of Richards Terrace. We are wearing the rag “wiggers” Nana put in to curl our hair and we are pretending to smoke candy cigarettes. (Gill Collection)

Esme and I on my father's ship, The Northleigh. She is scolding me as she plaits my hair. I am about age 7 or 8.

Rosie and I on The Northleigh, aged about 3 and 7.

Me in my school uniform

Me, Rosie, Nana, and Bob around the time we moved to 232 Newport Road. I am wearing the summer uniform of Our Ladies Convent and Rosie and I have the Clarks sandals we wore every year of your childhood.

My parents circa 1950. I have no idea why my father is presenting this cup but here we see my mother in her mink coat and carrying a crocodile-skin handbag dad brought her back from West Africa. (Gill collection)

The wedding party of my aunt Joan and uncle Tom outside the porch of St Margaret’s church. (Gill collection)

My grandparents, parents, and my aunts and uncles at some kind of evening party in the early 1950s. (Gill collection)

St Margaret’s, the parish church of Roath, reconstructed in the late 19th C to house a memorial chapel for the mother of the third Marquis of Bute. St Margaret’s church has some importance in this story because its parish records offer scraps of information about Nana’s life before I knew her. When I went on a nostalgia trip to Cardiff in 2021, I walked over to St. Margaret’s to try and get in, but the church was locked. I took a picture of the front of the church, whose porch forms the backdrop to so many family wedding photos, though, as we shall see, NOT of Nana and Bob’s. (Gill collection)

52 Kimberley Road in 2021. My photograph. Where my parents lived until their deaths.

Bob and my uncle Tom with the members of the Bowls Club in Cardiff. Circa 1956. Bob is third from the left in the front row with arms crossed. Tom is third from the right in the back row with his distinctive eyebrows.

My class at New Hall at Cambridge, ~1962. I am in the back row, fourth from the left.

A Christmas party at the home of my Uncle Stewart and Auntie Vee. Standing in the back row: my father, my mother, Stewart, Vera, Vera’s brother-in-law and sister. Second row, sitting on the settee: Auntie Winnie (my father’s aunt Winifred Gilbert Cox), “Nanny” Pepler (Vera’s mother), and Nana. Bottom row, my Scobie first cousins Bill and Jan, me, Rose and Harry. I date this photo to 1962 or 1963. (Gill Collection)

Me on graduation day at Cambridge, 1964.

Me in hospital, immediately following Chris' birth, October 1967.

A very newborn Chris, October 1967.

Me holding Chris, soon after his birth.

Nana, Esme and me during our first trip home after Chris's birth. 1967.

Nana in 1968 with Christopher, her first great- grandchild. Photograph by Mike Gill.

Me, reading in Radcliffe Quad, Cambridge MA, circa 1968.

Chris and Sarah, 1970.

Me and Sarah, Christmas 1970.

Chris and Catherine, ages 8 and 3.

Gillian Scobie in a cotton dress made by Nana.

Gillian Scobie. Photo by Mike Gill, 1964