Picture this

As regular readers of the blog may have noticed, I am not very good at posting photos. This is partly deliberate: I have been trying to preserve a thin veil of anonymity for myself, and my family (adorable as the Littleboys are, I feel slightly nervous about letting any random stranger look at them). But it's partly because I have just been a bit lazy; other bloggers are far more creative. (Audrey, at Multitude, wrote recently that she wanted to know what I look like - so if any other bloggy friend is interested, email me and I'll send you a link to Facebook or something.)

Anyway, Mom/Mum has tagged me to post a picture, and she is so funny and lovely that this time I feel I must oblige. It's also quite a fun idea, because behind every picture lies a story. But oh lord, there are rules.

The rules are: Go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures; Pick the 4th picture in that folder; Explain the picture; Tag 4 people to do the same

Now, I have to say that I tried this. And here the plan fell apart. The fourth folder in the pictures file was called Kodak Pictures, and seemed to be some kind of generic wallpaper-type pictures that probably came with the computer. The next one down was a collection of baby pics we had made for Littleboy 2's first birthday. And in the next folder, the fourth picture down was a picture of three friends looking rather drunk on holiday, and I'm not too sure they want to be featured on my blog.

So I've scrolled down to the next most relevant one from the same holiday: me, probably eating my picnic lunch, during a walk in the Alps in the summer of 2003, and luckily far enough away that I'm not too recognisable. You can at least admire the gorgeous Alpine scenery. The Doctor and I were spending a few days in France, en route to meet four friends for a week in Italy. It was a wonderful week; after the energetic walking in France, we were incredibly indolent in Italy, reading novels in the sun, drinking gin and tonics in in the swimming pool and spending boozy evenings round the barbecue. We vowed we would do it again. However, one couple conceived their first child on the holiday; the other shortly afterwards. We had our first two years later. The next time we all went away - three years later - we had four little boys between us and it was a cottage holiday in Wales. Still fun, but very different.

So it seems I have to tag four more people now. Come on down, Iota at Not wrong, just different, Paradise Lost in Translation, Mud in the City and Potty Mummy.