2004

Happiness is a tricky thing. Hard to define. Hard to hold on to. Hard to let go of. It arrives without warning and departs without leave. It will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered.

Every joy contains its inverse. All bliss is but a promise of sorrow. Love... ah, well, there you go.

This is a picture of me at my happiest. There were going to be others, lows to set against that dizzy height, but fuck it. Let this be the story of 2004.

Forget the rest.

1969

I still haven't decided whether this album is going to be a one-year-one-entry thing. That certainly wasn't the intention originally, but there have been a number of overlaps already that I've rather dubiously assigned one year or another for no very good reason except to avoid duplication. There's something appealing about breaking things down annually, but of course life doesn't give a flying fuck about that sort of tidy compartmentalization.

I mention this because in my original, vague, half-baked, mental scheme of things, 1969 was reserved for my sister, being the year she was both conceived and born. And at some stage I really do need to do my fraternal duty here, but this is not that time. This is merely the time to post a couple of sweet pictures from 1969, in which Dorigen is conceptually (that's -- I say -- that's a joke, son) present but not individually so. These are the "before" pics.

The one above is certainly the less interesting of the two. It's snowy and ancient, not much more. It's cute, but frankly it's just a trailer for this:

Hello! I love this picture.

Forget the guy with the camel, this is how I'd like to be remembered. The precocious, attentive two-year-old with an appetite for life. Gazing devotedly up at my beautiful, smiling, pregnant, hippy mother -- look at that hair! that dress! those shoes! -- clad in fiery red, all blond and wide-eyed, surrounded by the ruins of religion: a revolutionary angel full of hope and potential.

In all likelihood it was nothing like that. Maybe it was cold and dank and unpleasant. I was probably a wailing, surly little brat. But the setting -- Bolton Abbey, which we'll be revisiting in a future entry and just wait and see what I'm wearing then -- is magnificent, and time has worked some kind of magic on those colours. Lick the screen and taste the past.

I've told you all before how much I love my parents and how proud I am of my unorthodox upbringing. And now I've told you again.