I have no Polaroids tucked into boxes,

Pushed into wardrobes or under a bed.

I have no pictures to touch with fingers,

Pointing out memories of summers long gone.

It felt normal back then,

To not have a camera, locked in my hands,

But now I look back at the hazy images

Crowding the corners of an aging mind

And wonder what’s lost through ravages of time.

When I went travelling around South Africa at the beginning of the noughties, I went armed with a disposable camera that eventually got lost, left behind in some awful hostel in the arse end of nowhere.

I sometimes wonder what was on that film and what memories I have lost. There were probably things on there that I have completely forgotten about (and that I was probably a bit too drunk to remember anyway)!

However, those memories aren’t the only ones that have been lost. I’m notoriously bad for not having my phone on me, so I rarely have a camera either. It means that I often live in the moment, but it also means that I don’t capture that moment to look back on years later.

I sometimes feel really sad that I can’t find a single photo of the man I married in South Africa. There are no pictures of our wedding day or the flat that we shared in Durban. And that makes me really sad now.

I also don’t have any photos of when I was pregnant. None of those images of me lovingly holding my bump exist. I sometimes wish that I was famous and got papped so that I had some more photos of myself to look back on, worrying that I’ll become an old lady and have no photos of myself as a young person to look back on.

I’m going to make more of an effort to take photos and films because I love photographs so much. I’ll even make beautiful albums that can be passed down the generations. Or maybe I’ll just keep living my life…..

Much Love

Rachel xx