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He suddenly leapt back in shock as a huge bird came at him, beak wide
open, and snatched bread out of his hand, while a man in sombre clothes
looked on in amusement. No wonder I never liked geese, Albert thought.
He laughed as he saw himself being pushed along on a bicycle, screaming
out to his cousin not to let go of the saddle. His cousin agreed, then
promptly let go of the saddle, and the bicycle...carried on upright. He
had learned to ride it! And only forgot how when he steered round in a
wide arc and saw his cousin, dressed in dark clothes despite the summer
day, laughing at him from the other side of the village green. Other memories
swept past as he sat there, reliving his life with a clarity that even
his best memories had never before provided. Being stung by wasps from
a disturbed nest in an old Anderson shelter. Singing "Somewhere over
the rainbow" at the top of his voice with his black-suited father
while they were driving along in an old Aston Martin convertible, top
down and the wind roaring past them, whipping the words from their mouths
as soon as they were born. Wondering why the word "snowbow"
did not exist while he saw He glanced at the red lights by his bed. He had reached the age of ten already on his internal cinema and it was only 03:02. So many years, so little time. At this rate, he would be dead before 03:15. More memories pressed against his eyes, as though they were rats eager to desert the sinking ship. Albert could do nothing to stop them and sat there, almost mesmerised. The girl at school who insisted on showing him her bottom at regular intervals in his last year at primary school. His first day at grammar school, trying not to be noticed by the boys from the local school on the way home, even though he was wearing a black and white striped blazer. Ahead of him on the road, a tall man in a black suit seemed to be sweeping boys out of the way, keeping him safe. That was strange, he didn't remember that, even though he obviously had. As the memories reached fourteen, he found himself wondering idly how he was going to die. He felt fine, even his arthritis was not giving him any shooting pains like it sometimes did in the night. He smiled as he relived his first real kiss, felt tears run down his cheeks when those first kisses stopped, endured the pain of seeing her walking hand in hand down the road with the man in black. He felt the joy of graduating in 1961, at the age of 21, cringed as he saw the clothes he was wearing when he first met his wife. |
the sun shining one winter's
day, the hexagonal crystals of ice drifting lazily down into the garden
outside his bedroom window.|
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