Time is not a line but a dimension, wrote Margaret Atwood.
Memories. Memories and time fold back on each other. Themes. Places. People.
Walking with my son we watch the diggers near flats that are having their rooves replaced.
I tell him what the chutes are for.
We go past my old school.
A school friend died in November last year. She was in my class throughout school. A lovely girl. Had not seen her for twenty years.
She never came to my party when she was 11. Didn’t like boys, she said. Later we were friends.
I recall bricks being thrown once, in the ruins of the old dining room building at the top of the school yard.
Blood. Someone injured due to my brick. Accident. His Dad giving my Dad grief. My Dad giving me a crack later. A good beating 1980s style.
Eating my dinner and my drink had leaked. Ruined my packed lunch.
Sitting next to knob heads at lunch. Not allowed to sit where we wanted. The headteacher sitting at the front desk eating her lunch and watching us.
She once battered me at badminton.
Ruthless.
‘Mushrooms’ my two-year-old lad says. It was near this point that he saw a mushroom last winter or autumn.
His memory developing.
My memory racing and running away…
Far far away…
Comments