Mrs Roadshow's nostalgic surprise

When she was just eight years old, my wife returned from school to be told her father had died. Though throughout her life she has spoken fondly of him, tended his grave and marked the anniversaries of his life and death, what she has not had are any photographs of she and he together.

Dropping off presents at her uncle's house a few weeks back, he talked warmly of her father and the holidays they had shared. Driving away, inspiration flared and I realised that they might have some snapshots we were unaware of. Sure enough, they did, poor quality, mostly tiny, but there were about thirty in all, and in two of them F and her father were together.

In the tiny 1960's photographs their images were just a part, and by the time I had cropped them down to show only them, each image was about the same size as a small postage stamp. Nevertheless, I scanned them at 1200dpi and set to work with Photoshop to reduce the impact of the scratches and glitches, and to breath a little life into the faded images. Those you see above are pre-photoshop, and have since been much improved and re-cropped, before being enlarged, printed on A3 glossy photo-paper and framed. Hopefully she will be pleased with them.

Meanwhile, we are having a fancy-dress element to Christmas this year so, it might be hard to tell how exactly she feels when we insist she wears the Kigurumi Panda costume my son and I have bought for her. I suspect, being a fan of Minecraft, I will be required to spend a good part of the day with my head in a cube-shaped cardboard box, I shall post pictures afterwards.