On looking back

Your mileage may vary, this being a matter where responses are bound to be highly personal; but I hardly recognize as similar to my own any of the reactions described by Javier Marias to looking at photographs of oneself in childhood or early youth. It doesn't evoke in me pity (in the sense he explains), or sadness (see the subhead at the top), or a sense that childhood was my real home, or that I have a child inside me. The closest I come to any of these sentiments is that I continue to feel I am, in some respects, a young man - of about 24 - and that occasionally, looking at photographs of my children when they were young, I feel a regret for times vanished, mixed in with the other emotions.