Something about Pavlov’s dogs comes to mind here; we become conditioned to react automatically to a trigger, an event or experience, without thinking about it; and early learned behaviours from childhood, infancy, can become internalised emotionally, energetically, when reinforced by experience and continue into adulthood unless challenged… from within. So how does this relate to the ‘real’ world, the world ‘out there’. As an infant I learned that it wasn’t safe for me to speak out and potentially get something wrong, earning a painful smack in response to being what was considered outspoken. What was my response? To become withdrawn, I think shy was the appropriate expression at the time. I’d stand back, stay in the background, letting someone else stick their neck out and, if it was ok, I could follow suit. But it was more than that, I experienced physical sensations (hand tremors, feverishness, even fainting amongst others) that convinced me my fears were ‘real’. Fast forward several years, but still at primary school, and I was becoming recognised as having some artistic ability – my drawings and paintings were regularly recognised (pinned up on the classroom wall) and exhibited at the school Eisteddfod, the Welsh cultural celebration of the arts, music and literature.  At one such event I was standing by an exhibition of paintings, which included one of mine, when the ‘school bully’ came alongside and asked whose painting (indicating mine) it was. I made myself scarce, without answering. Even at secondary school my artistic abilities would be recognised by my contemporaries, but I would not be top of the class, that would be sticking my head above the parapet and too risky. Is this taking psychological analysis too far? Perhaps, but why does this resonate so many years later? Because the primary school painting was of a quayside, a dockyard featuring a crane as the prominent element, which I’ve always remembered. Many years later I had to face my fear when climbing a tower crane on a building site. An improbable connection, again maybe, but I also had a fearful dream about being ‘out on a limb’ on a tower crane as I was about to launch my new career, to reinvent myself as a freelance photographer in 1999. From a perspective now decades on from these events, it seems that confronting my fear was the key to unlocking the mystery of my life.