" The child is father of the man "

I was meant to be taking part in a panel at the Wigtown Book Festival today but circumstances prevented it, and I was grateful to Aileen McLeod MSP for stepping in at the last minute. I finally got free of things earlier this afternoon and decided to carry on sorting out a suitcase of photographs and papers that I took from my mothers' house when she died a decade ago, but have never scanned for my brothers (as I promised). I bought a new scanner last month to try and get going, but I have only had time to do half a dozen.

I didn't know , until she died, that my mother had kept a few press cuttings of various points in my career, plus of course lots and lots of pictures of myself and my two brothers at various ages including very 1950's studio portraits. I was stacking them up on my iMac desktop when what I suppose you could call a juxtaposition occurred - and with a bit of re-arrangement and the addition of a contemporary picture from my last election address, it became a sort of self portrait . One one that made me think of that Wordsworth quote anyway.