The lion in the photo is one of four at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. I am the little blond boy in the middle with purple flared trousers and a parka. On the right is my brother, and the girl is my second-cousin Tracy. We look like a bad ad for seventies kids’ casual wear. Why don’t girls wear pink and powder blue coordinated outfits any more?

I was three years old when my parents decided to leave Melbourne and return to London. They had been in Australia since 1968, they had bought a house, sent their children to school and had me. My sister left home at 16 to go to Canberra and work – I can only imagine how it must have felt to have your family leave the country when you are so young. The rest of us, Mum, Dad, my brother Steve and I, left on a Singapore Airlines flight to London. I remember the smell of the hot flannels they gave you to wipe your hands, a tarmac at night – the passenger causeway covered in canvas flapping in the wind and being scared of the lights below that I could see between the small cracks. I remember the hotel we stayed at on stopover at Singapore – the eggs made me sick. The hotel was the Hyatt, because for years we had their promotional postcards stuffed in a drawer– one of a giant gaudy modernist crystal chandelier that took up the entire ceiling of the lobby – and Singapore Airlines paraphernalia – were there stickers? Certainly the ‘Singapore Girl’ featured heavily.

In London I have only glimpses and brief moments of memory – I was only three so this isn’t bad for a series of recollections. A squirrel in a park; being bathed in the kitchen sink in my grandparents’ two-up/two-down and playing with Matchbox cars on the draining board; being scared of the shadowy creature in the cupboard (I think it was a vacuum cleaner); frosted glass on a dressing table; the blind lady next door (Mrs Spence) rummaging in her drawer for a lolly for me; the smell of creosote (made from coal tar) being painted on a neighbour’s fence; diesel fumes from a red bus; peanuts; a parrot in a pub; waking up and discovering my grandad’s holiday caravan was leaking; blankets and towels hanging out to dry; being placed next to a large lion statue and then the police telling my parents to get us down; my auntie Barbara’s pink bathroom; milk flavoured with Banana Quik; Nan Shillington’s glasses.

My parents, having sold everything and returned to England, decided after six (six) weeks that they would go back to Australia – everything had changed too much for them. They came back to Melbourne and started again.

Twenty-three years later I returned to London and insisted that my friend Miki take a photo of me at Trafalgar Square. When I got back home and compared photos it was clear to me that I was on the same lion (a complete coincidence – you can tell by the building in the background). The lions are made of bronze and are cold and hollow – whereas I always imagined they were stone. You can see from the photo that the London I experienced in my twenties was very different to the one that my parents described to me. You see, if you took their word for it, you would think that there was no such thing as a blue sky in England.