Weird. Very weird.

I've just spent an hour sorting through family photos - a task I'd promised to do as part of clearing the flat, and seeing my parents as I remembered them, but 20 years younger than I am now is very, very weird. Pictures of my father with dark hair and beard. Pictures of my mother, young and yet never *quite* young looking. 

Also odd was seeing pictures of my 18th birthday - looking much older than 18 - pictures further back of me wearing Delaune cycling club colours aged 15/16, further back still before the cycling gave me a stoop and neck problems that continue to this day, when I stood straight at 13 or 14.

Then there are my mothers pictures of her trip to Yemen in the brief window when westerners could visit with only a moderate risk. There's not a single picture of her in the set, but these are rare and almost unobtainable views. There's also poetry in the back, not hers I think, but written by someone she met there.

Pictures can sometimes carry so much.

Everything stays the same, everything changes.

 As I'm getting older it feels more and more difficult to talk, to communicate. Some of that is possibly thanks to trying to learn French and the re-wiring going on (not literally, but learning languages does cause some changes) in my head, but some of that is just the sheer effort required to do and say stuff, whether in words, music, photos or email. I'm still me, but it feels like an old me.

 It's probably why the blog is a wilderness now, barely tended. Maybe one day I'll want to say more again AND have the energy to do it.