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.