This was the photo Clare insisted on taking for framing on the mantelpiece, as both Alex and Adrian were here this morning. (They have both since left to see their relatives in Liverpool and thence on to a walking holiday in the Lake District).
The setting exactly mimics a similar couch potato shot she took on Christmas Eve 2001 in our house in Vienna, Virginia, USA (above) when again, the two boys were visiting. What a difference ten years makes! But not much to the cat experience!
Here's the next photo taken on that same Christmas Eve. Clare substituted for me on the couch and the cat is even more spooked.
Push time back another ten years, to 1990, and above we see Clare at a chateau in the Loire valley.
We're now back to the mid-year of 1980 and the garden of our damp flat in Slough, next to the canal. I was working as a computer programmer and Clare was managing the infant Alex, about half-way through her pregnancy with Adrian. We had been married two and a half years.
