Simple Pleasures - Day 10, A Photo Taken of You Over Ten Years Ago

This photo of me was taken at least twenty years ago. I must have been about 3 or 4, and we were still living in our house in Greenwich before we moved to South Africa. It was summer time, and even at that age I remember the magic time that was. Long evenings, that stretched on to infinity, when my brother and I really couldn't understand the need for a bed time.

This is one of a set of photos taken on the same day. Everyone smiling into the camera - my mum and dad making a bonfire, my brother barely a toddler naked and grinning in a little paddling pool, in the background trimmings from the garden piled high on a cheerful green wheelbarrow.

At the bottom of the garden, along the fence, raspberry bushes grew rapidly, heavy with fruit for a few weeks of the year. That day my mum gave me the bowl and told me to pick until it was full. Her and dad had explained to me how to check that they were ripe and to pluck them carefully from the bushes so that I did not squash them. As I went along I squashed the odd one here and there, until my fingers were stained pink and the nails red rimmed. I remember the tart sweetness of the berries, and looking up to smile into the camera, filled with a days worth of simple pleasures.