“Your mum loved the photograph of you and Jim as a little boy,” Chris told me over the phone last night. (Chris reads Mum my blog when he takes her shopping on Saturdays – he is such a wonderful son-in-law.)

“That’s good,” I replied.

“Yes, she said it reminded her of what a lovely little boy he was.” (Which is true but it’s nice to know that other people think the same.)

Perhaps feeling a touch lonely and nostalgic this morning, I opened a file of scanned photographs, the contents of which date back to times before digital photography was commonplace (although, interestingly, just now I was surprised  to find that the first digital camera was invented by Kodak engineers in 1975!).

First I looked through the early photographs and then my eyes fixed on a picture of my dad and my son; it was taken at my sister’s house one Christmas (you can see part of a bow of red ribbon in the background) when Dad was shrinking and Jim was a growing grammar school boy of fifteen. It wasn’t the best photograph of either of them – my father, who remained a handsome man into his old age, hated posing for photographs and his smile was forced, and Jim’s hair was untidy and his features still forming and sharpening – and yet, there was something about the image that brought me to tears. It could have been the likeness in their smiles, or the closeness which reminds me of their special bond. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Jim will be getting married next month and Dad cannot be there because he died nearly nine years ago.