these pictures....

One of these pictures was visible on my desk on Wednesday. The other was propped behind it. In fact they are still on my ipad stand. Being forgotten really - they are destined to take to my Mother but I keep forgetting. I have copies ready to make a scrapbook layout for 'my records', but haven't yet decided how to 'dea'l with them.

L-R Sister Sally, Me, Cousin Debra,Sister Diane, Sister Stephanie, Cousin Jane

This isn't unusual for me. Pictures that I'm really attached to take me ages to commit to Layouts. It's the sentiment, I think. Give me your favourite pictures and I'll do something with them in about twenty minutes! Plans for these two are running into months now. It's not about using the originals. I have copies stored on the PC. And to be honest, even if they were the originals, I'd use them. They are in my opinion, safer in my acid free scrapbook albums than in an old photo wallet stuffed in a drawer somewhere.

same arrangement, different ages.....

So why do these pictures say so much to me? Well, they include my Sister, Diane who sadly died in 1987. We haven't many photos of us all together, and even fewer of her as a young teen as she was here - let's face it, we are all silly about having our picture taken, and Diane was no exception! And then there's the reason for the photo. We rarely visited our cousins - quite often we lived abroad or too far away. We didn't exactly have a lot in common and lived very different lives. Jane and Debra lived on a farm and had their own horses for goodness' sake! That alone was enough to set us apart, being silly, girly and teenaged did the rest. So I love these photos for what they don't show as much as what they do....our horror at the planning of the visits, the feeling that we were forced to be friends, maybe having to 'play' outside.... you know! I love them because we are all in them, and that means that Aunty Sheila must have worked quite hard to corral us onto that wall outside her lovely house. Twice! She was a picture-taker. Of course, now I understand. And lastly, I love these photos because they were sent to me by my lovely cousin Jane. Which proves that its never too late to become proper friends. Jane, Debra and I have laughed over the strangeness of our relationships as children. Now we're grown up with our own children, we feel the ties that bind and perpetuate. Isn't that grand? Can't you get a lot from a couple of pictures!