I suppose I have a pretty strange relationship with the front room of my grandparents house in Harlesden. I vaguely remember that when I was five or six, I used to be reluctant to go in there, preferring to play in the back room or the passage next to it. The front room was slightly too smart for me and my brothers to play in.

Yet, sat in that very room with my parents as we opened our presents this morning, I couldn’t help feeling utterly astonished: on the walls around us were photographs of four generations of my family, spanning about seventy years of history. On one wall are three framed black and white  photos of my mum, aunt and uncle. Probably taken some time in the sixties, my mother looks about ten – a smiling, exuberant,  bubbly young girl.

Opposite that wall though, on a table by the front window, now stands a beautiful glass photograph of my niece and nephew which my parents opened just this morning. They  both bear the kind of cheeky, fun filled smiles that only children their age seem capable of; it’s a beautiful, beguiling picture which I found staggering when I first saw it earlier, astonished at how quickly my niece and nephew are growing.

That glass photo now sits on a table next to an electric photo frame sent by my other brother Luke, showing a montage of pictures of the newest member of our family. Elias is now around thirteen months old, and also growing rapidly. The photos reveal a young boy so full of life, for whom the world is still so boundless and captivating.

On the third wall of the room and on the mantlepiece above the old disused fireplace, are various other photos of other members of our family. There are two of my Greek Cypriot grandparents, my Yiayia and Bappou, looking just as loving and caring as I remember them to be when they lived here and we used to come to visit them. There is also one of them on their wedding day, taken before anyone here today was born. And there is also a photo of myself, my brothers and cousins – their grandchildren- as a group, probably taken when we were last all together.

Looking at the pictures on these three walls, they inevitably remind me of the unstoppable passage of time. My grandparents are no longer with us, and my brothers and cousins are in various places around the world, as far afield as Brazil. Yet here in this north London house is where that all started; where, over seven decades, three generations have been raised with warmth and love. Time, of course, can never stop,  just as my brothers, cousins, nieces and nephews should never stop heading out into the world;  but the pictures on the walls of the front room capture moments in time which bring the family together again.