THERE’S something about chapels in valleys town which feels uniquely Welsh. As the child of parents who were born and brought up in Nantyglo and Blaina as part of ‘good chapel-going families’ I seemed to spend a lot of my childhood wriggling in uncomfortable pews and munching on tinned salmon sandwiches in chilly vestries so it was strangely familiar to step back in time for a family funeral last week.

“Your grandmother used to love to bring you here to show you off when you were a baby,” whispered The Mother as we took our seats. “This was the chapel the whole family came to,” she added.

“It’s been such a long time since I’ve been here I don’t expect I’ll know anyone,” she said before pointing out the members of the congregation we were either related to, or she and my father had been in school with.

“I feel quite glad I came now…apart from the sad part about your Dad’s cousin dying,” she whispered looking around her. “I think I’m just about the only one of my contemporaries not on a walking stick or a Zimmer! That woman down there is years younger than me.”

“I’ll remind you about that later in the week when you’re moaning about your shoulders or you hips or any other of your many, many ailment,” I whispered back hoping The Mother’s stage whisper was not as loud as it seemed.

Later outside the chapel as we chatted to second and third cousins I hadn’t seen in half a century, the conversation turned - as it inevitably does - to which of my parents I most closely resemble.

The answer is always the same - if we’re on the Garn (because you’re always ‘on the Garn’ not ‘in the Garn’) I’m the spitting image of The Mother. If we’re in Blaina I’m a dead ringer for my father.

“Isn’t she exactly like Tudor?” said one of my parents’ old school friends, falling back on the unfathomable habit of calling my father by his father’s name.

“She is…although I see a lot of Lyn’s mother in her,” said The Mother looking at me in the way David Attenborough studies a rare species of monkey.

“She’s definitely got his eyes,” said her friend peering closely at me.

“I can thank him for the short-sight and the astigmatisms then,” I laughed.

“But I can see what you mean. She has got his mother’s stamp,” added another ex grammar school friend with a look it was hard to interpret.

On Sunday we gathered at The Mother’s for a video call with a cousin in Florida. As we chatted and share the latest family gossip my cousin stopped dead.

“Oh my God. You’re the spitting image of Nanna Lewis,” she said to The Mother. “It’s like looking at her.”

Then I realised what it was all about. We all look for the familiar because when we see those we love in someone else, they never really leave us - speak their names and they’ll never die, see their faces in another’s face and they’ll always be around. Suddenly it wasn’t too bad to look like my father…although the jury is still out about my grandmother!