Michaela and I spent some time clearing out a room adjoining Williams room today- which was, and will become again, an en suite shower room. At present it is a junk room- boxes, off cuts of carpet, toys.

In the process of doing so we opened up three boxes that were still more or less unopened from when we moved into the house- 8 years ago. I am sure there is some kind of rule of thumb about throwing out anything that has lain unopened for so long.

But these boxes contained photographs- you remember those- rectangles of shiny paper with images on. What we used before we all had laptops and i phones and flash drives. Which, when you think about it, is not very long ago at all- we got our first digital camera (actually, Emily was the first in our family to have one) around 6-7 years ago. These days my camera is never very far away.

Nothing brings to you the passing of time like a box of old photographs of the life you have lived- the people you knew and the babies now grown.

I need to scan some- but for the moment, the picture above will have to do- my lovely Michaela and little Will taken about 9-10 years ago. During a different life- when we were English.

There were also photographs of this old house– before all the renovations we have undertaken. Why on earth did we buy it?

Photographs make me sad

They make me proud

They make me wistful

And they make me grateful