On My Nanna's Dressing table was a photograph of her son, My Dad, taken over seventy five years ago. It is a formal shot, taken by a portrait photographer with him in his scout uniform saluting the camera.

And I look at the frail,old man that he is now, kept alive solely by my Mother's Love and wonder how they could be the same person?
He shares not a cell with the rather earnest little boy of the photograph, each atom long replaced and spread to the Four Winds and he no longer thinks in the way that he did then and his memories, like all of ours, are as malleable as clay and as unreliable to build from.

What do we share with our former and future selves? How are they us? How is the baton of being who we are passed on from second to second from cradle to grave?

As I have said, mamy times, I do not believe in an after life but if that most seductive of myths is true then I hope that his own Mum, my Nanna, is waiting to take his hand when he leaves this Earth and lead him back to his boyhood when he was, I think, most happy.

On my Mother's dressing table is a picture of my eldest daughter, it is an informal photograph taken by me and she is in a party dress cuddling my Mother and smiling at the camera. By the photograph is a poem that she wrote to say that my Mother was the person in all the world who made her feel happiest.

Clearly my Mum is a remarkable woman.