The little child runs towards the camera. He is missing one of his little runners but is oblivious.
He is also oblivious to the historic moment in which his life can be found in February 2022.
He is running from Ukraine, with his family, into Poland.
One day he may look back and recognise the significance of what he is caught up in. But for now, he is just excited and running with one shoe toward the camera.
Watching the news in the evening now after work is a surreal experience.
I come home from a busy day in the office, have my dinner, and sit down to watch the invasion of a democratic, sovereign, peaceful country by a former KGB thug.
A thug with a warped, distorted sense of history. A thug who lied to the world last week by telling anyone who would listen that he had no plans to invade Ukraine and that the concerns were a construct of the Americans.
All the while, he was making specific concrete plans to invade Ukraine. Humiliating his own ministers in front of the whole world. Making clear that there was no room for doubt or equivocation in their support for Putin and his Ukraine project.
His attempt to turn back the clock about three hundred years and ground his thuggery in some historical root.
Meanwhile, the world watches, stands staring like a staring simpleton.
And imposes ineffectual, selective sanctions which must not cause ‘gas price rises’ for American citizens.
Sooner or later this thug will have to be confronted.
Meanwhile, Kyiv and Ukraine suffers fatalities, and little boys and girls run towards Channel 4 cameras with one runner.
And early morning texters to the Rising Time radio programme prepare excitedly for a game of golf.
February 2022.