My life has been unexceptional, but it is the only one I have known, and I have loved nearly every minute of it. What is perhaps unusual is the quantity of material that records the early years, thanks to my Mother's decision to collect into an album for each of her three children as many photographs and other two-dimensional memorabilia as possible. I was the youngest child, so she was well practised in this art by the time I arrived, entirely unexpectedly, more than two decades after the first daughter. She kept the album going until I was an adult, I continued for a short while, but soon the last page was reached and the album was bursting at its seams.
