Memories

I know we're not meant to take photos of photos, but this evening I've been flicking through the album my parents gave me when they left the home I had grown up in (which is very run down now, my dad would never have let the exterior paintwork get into such a state!).

It starts before I was born, with a photo of my dad and one of his brothers, John, who's also no longer with us. He was the youngest, and died a few months before my mum. That must have been such a tough time for my dad.

Of the stuff from after I was born, it's roughly split into three categories: things I have no memory of (which isn't necessarily defined by age), stuff I do remember (or remember an element of) and memories that might be mine but might just be the photo.

The top left photo on this page is a family Christmas, maybe 93 or 94. My niece had got these tiny little gloves with coloured fingertips and she wouldn't let anyone but me put them on her hands. Bottom left is me and my friend Geri, sometime between 93 and 96 - I think my parents must have come over to Belfast for a birthday, because we have a cake in another photo. But I can't remember that at all (sorry G!). Top right is another NI visit, though from later in life after I left university. All I remember of that visit was I was flippin' freezing! And I'm with my niece and nephew in the bottom right photo, at the table in our family home, just settling down before bed.

I have such a terrible memory that it's nice to have these, just to remind me of a life well lived. I'm not famous, I've never (to my knowledge) saved another person's life or altered the fate of a nation, but I love and am loved in return.

And really, I think that's the most important thing.

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