aren’t i cool?
this is me when i’m between 4 and 7 years old. probably at the 4 end. we lived in fiji during that time, and we were hippies. well, sort of. that van covered in hindi advertising was our family car. it was eventually painted red, and was notoriously unreliable. it was small and had brown seats. i’d like one now.
note my blonde hair. i haven’t been blonde since puberty hit.
we were in fiji because dad took a contract at USP, and we left england to go there for three years. mum was a social worker, but there weren’t jobs for her in suva. so she was a housewife til she went nuts with boredom and started running playgroups, teaching people to ride horsies and so on.
i have quite clear memories of fiji, aided by photos like this one. my uncle ziggy was in fiji, visiting from england for a while when this one was taken.
that fence in the foreground was built by my dad to keep my brother in the garden. he was 3 when we left fiji, and for the first 3 years of his life he was an escape artist.
he had to be caged in because he’d escape, go wandering all over the neighbourhood by himself. not so safe. increasingly unsafe for a white kid between 1980 and 82.
Here we are together, on a beach in fiji, a bit older. i remember that day – we were on a little island with The Mother and a photographer/graphic design friend of the family. just a day trip for a bit of beach time. i loved those green togs.
this last photo is of us in brisbane. i was somewhere between 11 and 13. probably at the 11 end of things. he was between 7 and 9. it was a school photo day – why else would we be wearing our uniforms?
that’s all i’ve got to say – just showing some photos…