The couple walking up the hill was bent into a wind; or rather, were: she slightly ahead, he struggling. We crossed the road just ahead of them. Recognition: she was the mother of my two grown-up children; he, the man who married her later. Two couples, a partner of each who were once married to each other, had converged on a corner in one of those disjointed greetings that grow out of sudden recognition. Cordial now, have been for years: children in common. They had had a child. We had had three. Total: six. This week, we baptise a great-grandchild. A generation seems to have been overlooked. How did that happen? How? Years collide, crash; like waves on Inverloch beach in 1978 when I filmed on Super 8 the innocent gold optimistic sunset like the colours on her yellow and ref caftan, while a one-year-old child staggered on the sand as she watched, sitting, the fluctuating breeze alternately flicking her long auburn hair, revealing and obscuring her pale face, and later set the thre...
Recipes and ruminations from a small house in a big city.