Unnamed guinea pig emerges from the archive.

Circa 1967. A photograph taken by my father in a metaphorically Elysian field (actually it was in the west: a western suburb of Melbourne) surrounded by bucolic gardens lined with shrubberies and flower beds. 

It is mid-summer. A nine-year-old boy holds a guinea pig with a fat brown body and a patrician white flash down its nose, like a Melbourne Cup winner. The boy is me. I have forgotten the guinea pig's name. It was one of two; my brother had a multi-coloured one of white, brown and black, whereas mine was that black-and-tan brindle colour set off by its horse-like nose flash.