"P.S. How are the tomatoes?"

When I'm feeling sad, or sorry for myself, or lonely, I buy tomatoes for dinner - the small, expensive ones, still on their fuzzy sharp vines. The hot musky smell of them does something peculiar to my brain, opens a little wormhole in my head - or my heart, or somewhere- and sucks me through to my childhood. My own personal, internal, olfactory time machine. Time And Relative Dimensions In Smell. Or...something. I am a child again, standing in my Grandad's greenhouse, breathing in that smell. And it's a little bit theatrical, a little bit hammy (not the smell, the sentiment!), but I remember him like I last saw his yesterday, not five years ago.

But you see, my Grandad was often a little bit theatrical, a little bit hammy. A perfect, and my favourite example: The Curious Tale of The Missing Index Finger....

If I shut my eyes I can see my Grandad's hands - loose, wrinkled skin - the little nub of his left index finger which was cut off below the nail. When my older brother and I were kids he told us he'd got it stuck in the big anti-aircraft Bofors gun he fired during the war (presumably at a time when he and his mates weren't using the barrel of said gun to smuggle stolen tins of raisins, or being stranded on the wrong beaches with it whilst the rest of their regiment fought it out, a little way down the coastline, in the Invasion of Sicily.)

No, he told us that he'd been firing the gun in Egypt when his finger became trapped in the mechanism. Unfortunately it had to be amputated, but the story had a happy ending because he gave the nub of discarded finger, nail and all, to a sad and starving stray dog that had been skulking around camp - which led to the mutt following him around for the rest of the war. My mother, though, has another version: she was told as a child that he lost it in a duel with a Cossack. Yes. A duel. With a Cossack. Asking around, we realised that everyone had been told a different story.

That dashing looking blond lad up there is my Grandad, Ronald Price. I'm currently in the middle of spell-checking and correcting the grammar on the literally hundreds of letters that he sent to his parents whilst away during WWII, and which I've typed up and intend to make into some sort of book for my family. And I've finally found the truth of The Missing Index Finger:

"23^rd March 1945

I missed writing this weeks letter for a day or two as I squashed one of my fingers with a sledge hammer on Monday and the M.O had to cut the end of it off to trim it up. It’s the index finger of the left hand so it won’t bother me at all. It’s healing up very nicely so don’t get worried or anything."

They were putting up a tent. Not quite as glamorous as the duel or even the dramatic gun-mechanism-finger debacle. But this is my favourite story about my Grandad - if you know me well enough the chances are I've already told you it. It's my Grandad, right there. The entertainer. The comedian. The truth may not be as exciting as the overblown and entertaining tales that made us laugh as kids, but there's something in seeing this little paragraph, written to some parents at home in North London, worrying about their only son. Something so young and human. Reading these letters has let me see my Grandad as Gunner Price - in his early twenties, never left home till the war but now traveling the world, and desperate to document and share everything he sees and experiences with his mum, dad and sister back home.

In an odd way, I think I know how he felt. I spent three months in New Zealand at 19, phoning home almost every day to tell my family about the incredible places I'd been to, the people I'd met. I was desperately homesick but loving every minute - but more than that, more than homesickness, I was aching to share it all with the people I loved.

And here's my Grandad, old creaky Grandad young and blond, dancing and swimming and eating his way around Italy, spending his leave in Rome weighed down with guide books ("I saw the famous Colosseum but as it is not the first Roman amphitheatre I’ve seen I wasn’t very stirred"), going to a Turkish Bath in Iraq ("This brings to the surface all sorts of mud and slime whereon you blush hotly and wonder what mother would say"), picking up a tan in Sicily ("Yes sir, that’s me, the body beautiful. Oh what a treat the girls are missing.").

He was obviously making an effort to be cheerful and entertaining for his worried parents back home - and for his sister, who was slowly dying of a brain tumour. His letters to his parents and his sister in those last few months before she died are heartbreakingly chipper and positive, full of cheesy jokes and shared memories for her, and assurances for his parents' benefit that miracles happen every day, no matter what the doctors might say.

But it's the little things, the signoffs ("Cheerio love Ron"), the asides ("I hope Dad has just pruned the roses. Now is the time, you know) and the postcripts ("P.S. How are the tomatoes?") that bring it all home for me.

For a long time I've wanted to write something about my Grandad, but it's so hard to put into words all the things that I want to say. That I want to say to him, really. He passed away on the 29th of October, 2005. And I have missed him desperately, each and every day since.

I want to tell him how much we love him, of course - but other things, silly little insignificant things. I want to tell him that his letters are wonderful, that he was so very funny, and wrote so beautifully, and that I'm sure his words were a great comfort to his parents and sister. I want to tell him about my life now - the books I'm reading, the places I've travelled to and things I've done- the way I found the courage to get up and sing on stage because of him. The way I'll always try to be as good and loving and understanding and curious and excited a human being as he was - that I could never find a greater role model than him. And that I, like him, will never be too grown-up to get excited on Christmas Eve.

But I can't. But I do. In my head, every day. So here I am with my tomatoes, and I am a child again, and it's summer again - stretching on through endless sunny sunday nights, the knowledge of them ending there somewhere, but hazy, out of sight. I'm standing in my Grandad's greenhouse- stiflingly close air heavy with the earthy smell of things growing, sunshine and water on crumbly soil. The little concrete paving slabs line up between the tall green rows, a little tangle of strawberry plants makes a break for freedom through a gap in the breezeblock foundations. But mostly tomatoes. Little hot, sunny, red skin-cracked tomatoes.

"What did the Romans ever do for us, eh?!"

Cor, I spent ages on this picture! Again I'm left wondering when I will grow up and make proper worthy art instead of just drawing girls from different historical eras, but this was a great exercise in drawing straight on Photoshop which I very very rarely do. It's not really my preferred style, but it was good practice. Especially the hair, which took the bulk of 4-5 hours. This tiny crummy upload doesn't really do it justice, but there we go. Her name is Osian, which I know is a boy's name, but still.

I've no idea why but I'm currently in the midst of a massive Roman/Celt fixation. Alright, it's a bit of a lie when I say I don't know why - it all started when I went to see "The Eagle" movie a few weeks ago, based on the fantastic book "The Eagle of the Ninth" by Rosemary Sutcliff. The film is fun - nicely shot, good battle scenes, well acted - a little Hollywood-ish in places but forgiveable. It's not going to win any prizes for groundbreaking cinema, but it's a good fun movie - and it caught my imagination. And it's got that Billy Elliot bloke in it, skulking around being all slavey-y and Gaelic and moody and secretly/blatantly in love with his Roman master - Channing Tatum. Which is a made-up name if ever I heard one.

Every now and then I see a film or read a book which drags me into a particular obsession - usually a historical era. When this happens I just can't get enough of it: I need to read books and magazines about it, daydream about it, I need to watch films, listen to music, completely immerse myself in it. And then a few weeks later and normally with wallet a little lighter I come out the other end of the thing. Until next time, at least.

Mind you, I've always had a particular interest in ancient history and archaeology, so this is at least allowing me to indulge that. Everything seemed...more epic then, didn't it? When men built walls across entire countries, fierce painted tribesmen harried legionaries by appearing and disappearing in the mists, whole countries changed overnight. The list of things the Romans brought to Britain is staggering. I mean, locks and keys, glass, as well as little things like politics and governments and, you know, really really straight roads. They even had under-floor heating ("hypocausts" - amazing!). Turns out the Romans actually did do a lot for us.

The one thing that it's got me wondering though (and it's a pointless rhetorical question as I doubt anyone is reading this, but I can be self-indulgent on my own blog, right?): so much of our modern English language is from latin, and from the later Norman invasions, But when Rome officially got tired of mad tribesmen and year-long winters and abandoned Britain, the Celts and Saxons and British-born Romans were all left to jostle for power. The Celtic language was meant to be something like Gaelic but a lot more like modern-day Welsh (if that isn't a contradiction in itself) - so why aren't there more Welsh and Gaelic words in the English language? If that's what it evolved from?

Anyway, while I'm digging the whole Ancient Britain thing I feel I should really pimp out and recommend all the books by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and "The Eagle" soundtrack by Atli Örvasson, which has some truly epic celtic themed bits of music. I also watched "Centurion", which is alright but I enjoyed far less than "The Eagle" - because I couldn't give a toss about the characters and there was far too little bromance and much too much gratuitous day-go blood. Although it gets points for judicious use of Michael Fassbender. Oh and I revisited "Gladiator" and reminded myself why I loved it so much when I first saw it, and how magnificent the score by Hans Zimmer is. I'm currently debating whether I can sit through "King Arthur" and Keira Knightley's boney jutting chin again just to see the costumes and weaponry, or if it'll induce a repeat of the fit of hysterical giggles that it did the first time I saw it.

Hmm. Maybe my obsession won't stretch quite that far.