The world … Weekly Photo Challenge

The world like the last century is my oyster. I oscillate throughout the day between the hemispheres and celebrate that I was born in the middle of the last century. My youngest child lives in Brazil and we chat most days sharing intimate details (within reason) of her comings and goings and I in return relate the bits and bobs that happen here in my back garden!

I reflect on my life as child in post war Britain and enjoy the wonders of science when I help undergraduates in the library at work.

The enormity of this never ceases to amaze me!

Long before we considered that our child would go to University, we went on holiday to what seemed so far flung  … Portugal …  late last century!

The little girl, tired of sightseeing and learning of the bloodless coup as recent as 1974 and the devastation of the earthquake of centuries back, was weeping.

Nearby, a team of men were repairing the pavement damaged more recently and less dramatically by a traffic. On man was carefully chipping pieces of white and black stone to lay in an intricate design so admired in Lisbon and later taken to Rio de Janeiro.  He appeared to be oblivious to our family disorder; locked in his little world in a shady corner of the street.  He looked up and beckoned to our sad child who looked back at us for the reassuring nod that he was not too ‘strange.’ He reached out from his squatting position on her level and handed her a little piece of rock carved into a heart shape.  That action and the ice cream which followed made the world a better place. Now fast forward she in the southern hemisphere and us in the north zooming already into the next century … the rock (which mislaid at time of post) or more the memory of it has an uncanny knack of dragging us to the here and now.