Cracking

As a very young child I looked on a world that would in later life haunt me with its beauty and simplicity.

I have very early memories of kitchens and front-rooms and pantries, single-glazing, fireplaces, coal scuttles, orchards, fields, and enameled bathtubs. I even now remember my grandmother’s mangle in terms that others might well reserve for first loves.

I remember a white-painted wooden conservatory. I remember wasps and flies fizzing to death in its sun-scorched window sills, next to the old saucers, now bereft of cups, holding terracotta-colored plastic pots of tomato plants.

It was, as my grandmother would have said, “ever likely” that I would fail to find a true ambition. Growing up with memories like that, only an idiot would have wanted to move on.

Consciousness then began to take hold, and I suffered the inevitable metamorphosis we all must. I outgrew my skin, before cracking out into the freezing reality of life.

The thaw would take time.