Do you ever feel like you’re sitting dead centre in the middle of a photograph? Like the world is just a backdrop. Like the sounds aren’t sounding and the wind through your hair is all for you.

For a moment, and just a moment, you feel like this picture could hang on the wall of a great gallery, the kind where grown women in baby grows talk of Michelangelo. Where turtlenecks with heads sit and stare and spout opinions they almost believe. There, on the wall is this picture of me, sat by a lake, in the sun looking down at my laptop, typing. Typing this.

For this moment, and in this place, I feel like I’m meant to be here. Like I don’t have to spend my life skirting round the edges of things, attending a party as a plus one, queueing for heaven without ID. For a moment, this is good. I am still. Now is frozen in the warmest way. 

Of course, it doesn’t last. 

The sun is too hot. Typing is too boring. The sounds of the world have started again. I’m stuck. the foreground feels like a trap. Sweat is pricking the back of my neck and it’s time to go. To run. To get away. To find something dirty, or urgent, or busy. To find a cold drink, and some shade. To get off the postcard, get out of belonging and rejoin the world outside the portrait gallery. 

I guess nothing stays still for long… and so we move.