Significant moments

Karma is a funny thing.

    Forty (blimey) years ago I was in my first year at Exeter university and struggling. I had spent much of my adolescence in my bedroom filling out my chart of food-and-drink-consumed, in the grip of anorexia. I was not equipped for being thrown in with several thousand of my contemporaries.

    Now my lovely niece, who spent much of her adolescence languishing at home with ME, is going through the same. And not only is she studying at Exeter, she is in the same hall of residence that I was (and the chairs in the television room haven’t changed).

    These however are kinder times. She has changed her course, she may change universities, and her family are making frequent visits to keep her spirits up. With any luck the next few years won’t degenerate for her into the disaster that they did for me.

    Yesterday my niece and I went for a walk by the sea. She borrowed my camera to take photographs. Actually, as I’ve explained before, it isn’t my camera. It was chucked out by my brother – my niece’s father – because it didn’t work, and repaired by Frog. The photograph above is one of hers.

    Trish Currie in her blog ‘What’s cooking?’ (http://www.trishcookingcurrie.blogspot.com/) writes about significant moments, the moments of each day that you remember and which in her case she turns into her exquisite almost-daily posts.

    I have many lovely memories from yesterday but one stands out from the others. Ellie playing in the waves with her new friend, a chocolate spaniel called Indie. Me talking to Indie’s ‘owners’. And my niece smiling in the sunlight.