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London, 2005 to 2007

The earliest London photos we still have: a birthday on the London Eye in 2005, Chinese New Year at Trafalgar Square in 2006, and graduation day in 2007.

This is the bottom of the London box. Three years, a handful of frames, and cameras that were doing their best. We were students then, London was the big city up the road rather than a place we knew, and the pictures we bothered to take were the ones that mattered: a birthday, a festival, and the day the studying finally stopped.

A birthday on the Eye, September 2005

Close selfie of Dileep and Inga cheek to cheek high on the London Eye, a glass capsule and the city stretching away below behind them
September 2005, Inga's birthday ride on the London Eye. Cheek to cheek at the top of the loop.

Chinese New Year at Trafalgar Square, 2006

Inga and Dileep wearing camouflage helmets with goggles while sitting in an open army vehicle at Trafalgar Square, red lanterns strung overhead
Chinese New Year 2006 at Trafalgar Square, where an army display and the red lanterns shared the same sky. The helmets weren't optional.

Graduation day in Greenwich, July 2007

The one fixed date in this whole page: 20 July 2007, graduation day at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, with Dileep's parents and brother over for the occasion. The student years that led up to this day are over on Greenwich.

Graduates in gowns and mortarboards lined up with academics in colourful robes along the stone colonnade of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich
The whole year lined up under the colonnades of the Old Royal Naval College, academic robes bringing the colour.
Dileep in cap and gown shaking hands on stage with an academic in a dark blue and red ceremonial robe
The handshake that made it official. Years of study, one scroll.
Dileep in graduation gown and mortarboard holding his scroll, posing with his mother, father and brother for a studio portrait
The official family portrait: one graduate, two proud parents, one brother already planning where to eat.
Dileep in cap and gown with his scroll standing beside Inga in a black coat and white scarf for a studio portrait
And the unofficial one. Inga attended every all-nighter by phone; the scroll is at least a third hers.

After the scroll came the gap: a few quiet years, then London pulled us back properly. The next chapter runs from a Hampton Court autumn to a front row seat at Fashion Weekend, over on London, 2011 to 2014.