2003-09-01 - 4:04 p.m.

My Dad turns 60 next month and I decided he should have a party to celebrate this rather momentus age.

I went to my parents' place this weekend to find an old photo to incorporate into the invitations. As you do.

I found this picture of my father as a child of about five or six years old when he lived in London, in Old Kent Road no less.

[aside - as a child, I was always proud of the fact that my father used to live in a street on the Monopoly board, I would always buy it for sentimental reasons. As an adult, I went to visit the place and came to understand why it was the cheapest place available.]

So this photo is of a scrawny little pommy kid standing in a dank alley, wearing a singlet tucked in to the largest pair of underpants you've ever seen on a child of that age, and the singlet is coming OUT THE BOTTOM of the underpants!

I love this photo and laugh everytime I see it. It's so Monty Python.

The rest of the album consists of photos of my Dad's family away on holidays in the Isle of Whight. These holidays consisted of a tent on a pebbled beach, complete with handkerchiefs on heads with knots tied in the corners, china tea sets and the old Singer sewing machine - y'know for mending in between dips in the icy cold English channel.

No one does it like the English!

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