While the kettle boiled for my second coffee of the day I sorted out the shelf in a cupboard where I lodge my pills and potions, popped the morning doses, including a new one, evil-tasting on the tongue, containing a cocktail of vitamins and minerals ‘specially formulated for the over-50s’. Not sure I can remember being fifty now, events, yes, but not what it felt like.
Feeling chill I wandered into the living room to give the heating a nudge, then upstairs to fetch a nice warm snuggly sweater.
And then I looked out of the little window, over the garage and on to the houses opposite and the trees beyond. There’s a valley side behind them though you can’t see it this time of year for all the verdant leafage.
You’d not much enjoy it, anyway. Not today. There’s a dank, unpleasant grey mist over everything, and valley tops are only attractive if you can see them.
Perhaps. Well, they’re attractive even if you can’t see them, I suppose, at least as much as the sound of a one-handed clap in the forest is, with no-one to hear.
Funny thing, the memory as you get older. Some things are so clear you could cut your nose on them. Others fade away like cheap snapshots, fit only for a moment’s reclaimed brilliance on the fire. As with my nice warm sweater, it can sometimes feel as though that burst of flame is all they’re good for.
Cilfrew
