Sunday, March 1, 2009

home

- or so I still atavistically think of it, in Wimbledon: on the left, a scary forty-eight years ago, and on the right, this morning.   My father had been posing me in my brand new Wimbledon High School Junior School uniform - bought at a School Outfitters called Kinch and Lack in Victoria.   I didn't know whether to be embarrassed or proud of the fact that my head - measured for the navy blue hat with a green and white ribbon - had been judged to be size 7 1/8 - apparently very large for my age.   Navy mac - or maybe the navy blazer and navy skirt.   Vile beige socks - I don't remember them at all.   And Very Sensible Clark's Shoes.   And a brown satchel.

Other photographs from the same day suggest that my father was having a Steichen/Vermeer aesthetic moment, and prove that I could be a very solemn looking child - no wonder I worked subsequently on the Victorians - it looks as though I was one.

Going in and out of the front door collapses time.   Though the door, by now, has sprouted a little portico, and roses have grown up - the overflow from the downstairs bathroom still pokes out very inelegantly, though.   I was planning on musing at more length on putting past and present views together - but it was a long flight home here from home there, and I'm tired.  

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