I had found the boy in the blinking neon lit pleasure dome of Margate’s Fun Land engrossed in the game of ‘Grab n Go’. I had watched as he became utterly absorbed in the futile task of trying to win a prize and recalled with some fondness my own captivation and failure with this very same game.

Having metered and pre-focused I watched him for several minutes, waiting for him to turn around and make eye contact before opening the shutter. In the brief moment he looked at me I felt his sense of surprise. It was as though the time he had spent engrossed in his game had been held still and stretched like elastic, the release snapping the elastic back into place with a jolt.

As a small boy I would be taken to the seaside town of Blackpool for days out and I vividly recall the intense sense of excitement I would feel in my tummy when the sea finally came into view over the dashboard of the car.