‘A Fading Memory?’

This photograph shows me as a 4-year-old fishing with a worm as bait from the end of the pier of my parents' little summer house on the banks of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

It was 1951, our last summer there, before my father returned to Britain to start a new job in Edinburgh, and we all started a new life here.

The house was on an 8-acre promontory outside Meredith known as Mile Point. It was reached by rowing boat with an outboard motor, as though a railway line passed close by; there was no road. 

I still feel that it was a very special place to have had some of my earliest memories, and despite the photograph, they haven't really faded!

Afterword: 
I had never been back until, in October 1997, we turned up at the house completely unannounced during a holiday in New England. 

Though the current owners were closing the house up for the winter, they gave us the warmest of welcomes (they couldn't believe that the son of ‘The English Professor’ - the previous owner of whom they had heard) had just appeared out of the blue!

The wife's family had bought the house shortly after we left, and little had changed. They showed me around, including the little cabin my father had used as a study, complete with his original desk! (It brought back memories of me putting my head around the door and the strong smell of the Edgeworth pipe tobacco he smoked!) 

They have since kept us informed about how they have been remodelling it so they can live there all year round. 

We are still in touch.

(The photograph is based on a colour slide, which has fortunately not faded - see extra.)