When I first came across the pictures I thought that they were of A and D’s wedding. I had enlargements made so that I could put them into an old-fashioned cloth-covered photograph album to give to my French friends.

It was only when I was arranging the enlargements that I spotted myself in the photos of the family groups. I must have been there to look after A and D’s baby twins. I also noted that the “bride” was wearing a hyacinth blue silk dress. This all meant that these couldn’t possibly have been pictures from the wedding day. Perhaps it was the children’s christening party?

A and D were delighted with their present – so much so that they invited everyone to a reunion at a small hotel in France. The highlight of the day came when we all dressed up in the clothes that we had worn three decades earlier to recreate every picture in the album.