My niece, Aurora Joy

Large portraits of Aurora

Niece, goddaughter, pianist, artist, bright, lovely, nurturing and truly one of my favourite people in this World. She is as close to a daughter as I'll ever be able to have.

The distance between us makes me beckon to live back in the UK. And now my niece is grown and ready to start at Bournemouth Grammar School for Girls in the Autumn.

With the boys and my elder sister Anne-Marie in tow, the rain is just starting to fall as we scurry into the ancient woods which lie at the edge of the golden wheat fields alongside my parent's home in Upminster. The nearby hamlet along The Chase is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.

She has stung herself on a line of nettles and then again by a little swarm of mosquitoes as we leave the damp woods.

"Will it matter that I've been crying?" asks Aurora when I say I'd love to capture her lovely face with my camera. The elements are coming together to make it a perfect time.

I smile, knowing that the tears will only brighten her eyes even more.

Anne-Marie has walked on ahead with the boys, mounting the double stroller over the style which abuts the wheat fields.

The clouds are thunderous and threatening and I challenge the light as it dances, skipping between the wheatshiefs. And then Aurora too starts to dance in the wheatshiefs, very accustomed to her silly Auntie always wanting to capture the moment we now stand in.
Aurora Joy in the wheat fields

I think they'll make a pretty album for her upcoming birthday. I can't decide on which to Blip, wanting to convey her sparkling personality, intelligence, humour and loveliness, the light, the wheat gasping for harvest, her striking eyes, but even for a camera, that's hard to do. Perhaps Aurora Joy herself will swing the tables for me when she sees them...