How we first met

I saw you in the mirror of a hot summered day.  And just how long had I waited to meet! There were fleeting glances before.  Casual sightings that seemed to end as soon as they started.

But where did this story begin?

Let's rewind to the icy climes of January.  Mother has just died.  Mother who entombed her emotions behind a solid concrete wall after the death of her daughter aged eight and her husband aged forty eight.  Mother who had no answers and no words for a confused young boy.  Mother who in years to come will reject her own great grandchildren.  There's some some healing to be done.

And at the start of the year I'm thinking too of my approaching sabbatical. Three months off! I left school at seventeen and this will be my longest break ever. I'm not sure if I'm excited or just a little bit scared at the prospect.

Then I speak to others of their sabbatical experiences. Their great journeys exploring the world - Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa.  I realise this will not be for us.  Our youngest grandson is severely epileptic and we can't afford to be more than a few hours away in case of yet another emergency hospital visit. It brings back memories of when we first learned of our own son's handicap. We cancelled a tour of the States .. to mourn together.

But this time it's different, there's some healing to be done.  And it's a blast from start to finish - here are just some of the highlights.

A trip to Cornwall in our camper van to hear Sigur Ros conjure an Icelandic storm in music amidst the dying embers of a summer day at the Eden Project. Taking the photograph of one brave young lady who I subsequently discover has undergone brain surgery for her own epilepsy.  A co-incidence or a God incidence?

Our return to Latitude and two very special acts.  The first is a sixty three year old short-order cook and latter day James Brown impersonator who's not giving up his chance to shine. In the lunchtime sun he cooks up a magic experience as powerful as the years that fill his frame.  The second, two teenage prodigies who rock a dance-tent rammed to the gills with fresh-faced youngsters.  Charles Bradley and Disclosure are separated by several decades but share one thing in common. They WILL seize the day!

A special visit to Paris to celebrate our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary. We married young and couldn't afford a honeymoon .. not that we cared. We embraced and walked the sands of our hometown beach to eat fish and chips for our first meal alone as a married couple, a tradition we repeat each and every year to remind us of shared and deepening love. And so it is again in one of the best fish restaurants in the capital of France, and it tastes just as sweet as it always has.

And so to a very special week on my own.  Something I've never done before.  A Street Photography course at an Arts College in the heart of London.  What joys await!  A riotous journey across Notting Hill Carnival, my stomach filled with cheap chicken-jerk and a four-pack of Red Stripe in hand! So many great photo opportunities ….

Yet it's the still of an afternoon that moves me most.  A photographic assignment that finds me venturing into St Pancras Old Church.  It's empty but for two elders polishing the congregational brass. And it's there I smell it. Brasso!  Oh what memories that brings back.  An age of innocence as my mother polishes and dusts and just four years old I help her fold the fresh-laundered sheets!  A time before the concrete wall fell into place.  A time of healing …..

And it's there I find you. A street away and a dusty antique shop.  I look into a mirror and smile and smile and smile. And take a photograph of the first time I meet what I can be …….

Healing.