Looking through old photos in my dad's house one afternoon, I found a picture I had never seen before. It was taken in the early 80's and showed a group of us on picnic at the beach. Studying it gave me a surge of nostalgia for a time I don't remember at all, and made me wish for ...
Long, long ago, on a campsite far, far away, I met a holiday friend called Claire. She had long brown hair and was from Ireland or England – I wasn’t old enough to distinguish accents. I had spent two days sitting on the steps of our mobile home looking across at her, and she’d spent ...
For years now, Scooby Doo has been entertaining my kids, and also for years, I've been telling them that I used to watch Scooby Doo when I was a kid. Every time. They must be thrilled when they see me coming with the same nugget of nostalgia. The blank looks and implicit shrugs say it all. ...
Summing up your life in eight photos of happiness - it's kind of irresistible. I'm an obsessive photo-taker and have been since I got my first camera from Santa about thirty years ago, so when Lady Nicci gave me the opportunity to try this post, I was immediately in. Well, immediately plus four months. After years of watching ...
Babysitting. Something about which I have vivid memories; a teenage part-time-job. And now it's come full circle, as what seems like five minutes later, I'm all grown-up and paying a teenager to mind my kids. Having had three childminders (counting the runaway one) and about forty different creche minders (high turnover), I didn't expect that leaving the kids ...
Driving along the coast road, the September sun is filtering through the white sky. Mixed weather is what the forecasters call it. Silence from the back; a Saturday football roundup on the radio. Tired after running all day, three small faces are watching but not watching. The sea stretches out beside us and the red and ...