the ginger duo

last year, my family went back to our home town to sift through the junk/antiques/memories that existed in my parents loft, before they closed it up to rent the place out.

my main objective, other than to oooh and aaah at all the old toys we used to play with (aka fight over) and the books my parents would read to us at night, was to salvage the hundreds of old photos thrown up into storage.  i was genuinely concerned that a fire or flood or any other freak accident of nature would destroy all those beautiful reminders of the years gone by and the people lost.

taking all of them back to london would have required a truck, so instead i filled a box with my favourites......

photos of my grandad help me to remember him as the tall, strong man he was before he fell ill and passed away a few years ago. lots of those are my favourite.

photos of my parents when they were young remind me that they weren't always parents and that i probably get my love of clothes from my mum. to be honest, my dad went to art school so he was actually a bit of a fashionista too!

but i also love the photos of me and my brother, at all ages. i love looking back on how we were and how we've grown over the years.

on showing my childhood photos to m.r., after laughing hysterically, he told me that neither of us look all that different.

sure, i may dye my hair now and my brother may have grown into his head (well, not entirely!), but, physically, we really haven't changed.

what has changed the most over the years, is our relationship. just like most brothers and sisters, we fought - a lot. when he left for uni, things got better and by the time we were both living away from home, we had both realised that perhaps we weren't as horrible as we had once thought.

but since he's found his lovely wife, since i've found my gorgeous m.r. and, most importantly, since he became a dad, everything has changed again.

you know what, we actually like each other - a lot.

and not just because mum and dad tell us we have to!