Some people may think it’s been a waste of my time but I thought it was an emergency. If I didn’t act soon nearly all the photographs taken of my darling son during his first year of life would fade into oblivion; in fact, some of them were barely there. Back then I had one of those instant cameras, which were all the rage in the late seventies, and it was fun to have instant results even though they were only in black and white (I hasten to add that “the late seventies” to which I’m referring belong to the nineteen hundreds rather than the eighteen hundreds).

My son James, whom I used to call Jamie as a baby, is now married to a girl Jaimy and they are expecting their first child – a little girl – in July. Over the weekend my daughter-in-law sent me photos of herself as baby and she asked if I would send her some of James… that’s when I realised that all the small baby ones were either damaged or in varying degrees of bad fading. Truthfully, they weren’t even good photos at the time but that was the only camera I had. Nowadays everyone can be a great photographer with their digital cameras and PhotoShop programmes but back then you saved up and went to a professional photographer for your special photography.

The following year I bought a Kodak Instamatic, which took coloured photographs – hooray! – but they weren’t very clear and nearly all had a red cast. To a novice like me, a good photo was possible only under special conditions – particularly if the sun was shining, but not too much or there’d be white out! Therefore there weren’t many good shots for the albums.

For most of today and much of yesterday I’ve been trying to save the nearly lost images by photographing them and using all my PhotoShop skills on the new shots. Whilst working I’ve been a bit tearful remembering the old days… Now it’s James and Jaimy’s time – the turning circle – and instead of knitting for my baby I’m knitting hats with ears for my granchild… and for my great niece, great nephew and Rosie’s grandchild. Everybody likes hats with ears! I shall never have a hands free night of watching television again.