fabergemonkey

snippets

I guess I am in a bit of a funny mood tonight. Nothing untoward, not angry, frustrated, grumpy nor down. I am just… melancholic.

I am supposed to be putting away the vast pile of laundry that has accumulated over the last couple of day. I am supposed to be going for a run, making dinner, reading, writing, all sorts of things.

Instead I went looking for something, I am not sure what, but I was looking for something, and in the course of the looking I discovered a whole heap of memories; photographs, writings, snippets of this and snippets of that. Nothing but memories, captured in colour and word.

Holidays and friends and loved ones and good times and bad times and small reminders of events and happenings that I had been present at but had somehow, in the melee of life, slipped my mind. There are smiles and tears and laughter and sadness and each word or face or scene drowns me in memories and nostalgia and happiness and regret.

I know I am a many layered beast, we all are, shaped and formed by the accretion of circumstance and influence and events that stretch back into our past. We carry with us a vast cloud of ‘us’ or ‘ourselves’, malleable and formless and indistinct, and it takes but a trigger to bring a part of that cloud into sharp focus, coloured by emotion and time.

I am surrounded by these memories, intangible and ephemeral, and I forget their weight and their significance. I forget the power they exert over me, reaching forward into the now, until suddenly I remember and their relevance becomes all too apparent.

I am making memories, I always am, and those of the now are happy ones; bright and cheery, full of hope and breathlessness and anticipation. I wonder that they in time may fade into the background, shaping me from the shadows of my mind, until I once again discover a trigger that reminds me of who I once was and who I am now.

I wonder how much of myself I have forgotten, hidden away beyond my ability to recall, beyond the bounds of rediscovery. I wonder how much of myself I will forget, how much of me will only exist in photographs, emails, writings, tweets and all the paraphernalia of my current life, a mere facsimile of the truth of me, whatever that may be.

the lake district

In a few days I will be off back to the Lake District. Here are some photographs from the last time I was there.

on the edge

The tires were pretty bald. That was the first thing I noticed. Certainly the tire over which I was sitting was, and the fact that it was poised right on the edge of a dirt road with a several hundred metre drop beyond it was the second and decidedly important fact that I noticed.

“Are we close to the edge?” My companion asked.

I considered this for a moment, trying to frame a reply. As I did so a thumping and a whistling came from the corner of the bus, as a small boy hanging precariously from the roof communicating the exact status of the wheel’s location to the driver.

“Yes, you could say that.”

I was distinctly aware of the fact that the bus, or coach (it was hard to tell) was probably as old as the mountains we were traveling over, and that the exact level of maintenance conducted on it was minimal to say the least. I had, unfortunately, made the mistake of inquiring about this element of the journey earlier in the day and was not best pleased, if unsurprised, at the answer.

There was more whistling and banging and my eyes were drawn to the outside world, leaving behind the overly full space within the bus, gazing out over green valleys and a young, vigorous mountain range. The seats within were cramped, even for me, and at one point my companion and I had a child each happily sitting on our laps, with people perched over us, stood upon the many sacks and boxes that filled the aisle between the chairs. I had noticed earlier that the chairless space beside the driver (no more than thirteen passengers) had been crammed with at least twenty women and children.

At checkpoints the bizarre ritual of the disrobing of the bus would occur, with the overhead occupants of the roof jumping off, hurrying past the checkpoints before climbing aboard once the bus had been waved through. Theirs was a journey of open air and swaying, gentle vistas. Mine was cramped and suffocating, and to some extent I envied them their place, perched above on bags and produce, kings and queens of their own small mountain.

The wheel clung to the edge of the road, inches from the edge, and more banging and whistling sounded out, the slap of small hands on metal coming from both ends of the bus. I craned my neck, peering through to hubbub of bodies to see that we were trying to pass a lorry that was coming the other way, a feat that seemed impossible given the finite width of the road compared to those of the two vehicles. The banging and whistling grew more frenzied and my companion closed her eyes.

Finally, after what seemed an age, we passed the lorry and trundled on, winding our way up the near vertical sides of the mountain. I ached and needed to stretch, but it was impossible, and another four hours or more stretched out ahead of us. Patience and stoic acceptance of discomfort became the virtues of need, an acceptance of the reality of such travel helping to dispel the all too common moments of terror and ambivalence.

We broke down once, then twice, then three times, immobile at a steep angle whilst repairs were carried out; brief opportunities to stand, stretch the legs and see what there was of the world to see. Mountains stretched out before us, an expanse of unimaginable mass and wonder, escaping off into the distance. It was warm and had been hours since we had eaten, a small roadside cafe in the middle of nowhere, serving massive helpings of delicious dal bhat for a few rupees, rewarding you afterwards with the most disgusting and horrifying squat toilets ever encountered.

Eleven hours after leaving Kathmandu we crawled into Dhunche, tired, hungry and anticipating the following day, when we would finally head off into the mountains on our long awaited adventure.

All these years later, despite the grandeurs and experiences, the incredible views, the pain of the up and the pain of the down, despite much needed marathon bars and great bowls of fried rice, despite ‘showering’ out of a bucket in a swiss cheese of  stone hut with frigid howling winds cutting through me, despite the achievements and laughter and quiet reflection in the presence of something ‘more’, the memory that keeps coming back to me is the one of looking down over that precipice. Looking down, seeing the tire and the distance and all that space, hearing the whistles and the thumps and knowing that I was trusting in factors and people beyond my knowledge and control. And for those moments it was a truly wonderful feeling.

perspective

“Jay.”

I look up, the sweat pouring down me. I don’t think I have ever been this tired, and after the last few days that is saying something.

Hori’s face beams down at me, friendly, open, touched with a hint of concern.

“I’m fine.” I gasp, and with a look of faint disbelief he walks onwards and upwards. Weighed down with my pack, I follow him up the steep incline, the pain a repetitive unrelenting thrum in my body. In my misery and exertion I am blind to the glorious view, to the scents and sounds around me. There is only the struggle upwards.

At the top I am rewarded by several items of note, not least the cessation of an almost eternal battle against gravity. The view stretches out in front of me, the valley up towards Kyanjin, the far point of the trek upon which we are on. We are standing beside a small inn/restaurant, its existence in the middle of nowhere in the less traveled sections of the Himalayas no longer the source of bemusement it would have been before. A can of coke and two snickers bars await and are consumed with a relish I had not expected. Behind me the view is even more spectacular, mountains puncturing the sky with an indifferent elegance.

I amble about a bit, thankful to be walking without the weight of my pack, burdened only by one of my cameras. Bushes border the small building, blooms of intense red spotting their deep greenery. I take my camera to them, firing off a couple of shots, conscious of the constraints of being able to carry only so much film. I admire the flowers and lean in to smell them.

Intrigued by my hapless fits of the giggles, my companions wander over, questions in their eyes.

I turn to them, grinning broadly, all the tiredness of the day dispelled.

“They’re tied on. They’re not real!”

***

When I was younger I used to suffer bouts of rage and depression, often triggered by the simplest and most innocuous of things. They were not the external kind, those flashes of tempestuous temper that are brief and then forgotten, like my father’s. Nor where they the slow burning, long lasting rumbling earthquakes that were my mother’s. No, mine were the unfortunate blending of both, dark moods of unfathomable emnity, long lasting until they eventually dissipated into nothingness.

It took me a long time to learn to control them, and it wouldn’t have happened without the help of one friend, who, one day, despite warnings from colleagues, walked through the cloud of my depression and anger and obstinate iciness, stood before me and with her thumbs wiped away the furrowed lines from my brow, smoothing them into nothingness.

“I don’t like those. What’s wrong?”

With that simple act the moods were broken, their seeming control over my life undone by another’s moment of direct kindness, a gradual decline towards normality.

***

“And what am I?” I asked, the sun warm on my face, my body tired but able. The mountains are incredible, but like humanity everywhere, the magnificent verge on the mundane with continuous exposure.

Hori looks at me.

We are on a rest stop, half-way up a ridge, half-covered by trees, a semi-brutal ascent on another leg of the trek. Hori has been playing tunes on two blades of grass, a delightfully engaging melody from an unbelievably talented young man. In between tunes he has narrated the story of one of the incomprehensible and very long hindi songs he had been listening to the night before.

He considers for a moment longer, frowning.

“Himal baloo.”

“Himal baloo? Mountain bear? Why?”

“Because, Jay, himal baloo does not like going up.”

***

The moods still exist, occasionally swaggering into existence with their old affrontery, although they are no longer the force they once were, so rare and fleeting are their visits.

I look back sometimes, wondering what I would have turned into, without that moment. Would another have come in and, through some other act, done something similar? I don’t know.

It is difficult to describe depression, so often sumptiously adorned with despair and anger as it is. They are words that so ineffectually hint at the the utter darkness one finds oneself in. It is all-encompassing, haranguing you and insinuating itself into every facet of your existence, a sibilant subtle seductress so hard to ignore. One moment you are fine and then the next… the world is darker, scarier, grimmer place.

***

It is the middle of the night and it is bitterly cold. Nature calls and I slough myself of my sleeping bag, clothes and the all important down jacket donned.

It had been another glorious day, a long walk up from Sing Gompa towards Laurebina Yak, with the glittering sacred lakes of Gosainkundu beyond. We had walked through the rhododendron forests, climbing steadily in the sunlight, days of walking making the task that little bit less effortful. My pack was still heavy, stuffed with clothes, equipment, and the paraphernalia of a photographer.

Ten minutes later I was buried within my cold and wet weather gear, the mother of all hail storms savaging the world around us. Before long I was crunching over inches of hailstones, the vibrant colourful world reduced to the darkness of my hood, the atrophied grey and white of a white-out, the wind and hail pinging hard against me, bruising me with its ferocity.

I marched on, following Hori as he continued along the path, breathing more easily as, slowly and reluctantly, the hail turned to snow, the storm gentled and calmed and the world was bathed in white. The lodges of Laurebina Yak were a comfort when they came into sight, the snowfall stopping as we approached.

Inside were the welcome of a cup of hot tea and hot food, and tomorrow heralded decisions to be made about the rest of the trek, our journey through Gosainkundu towards Kathmandu in doubt with the weather so bad.

***

I remember the feelings of depression, in the way I remember the flavours of a favoured meal. they are distinct in an unreal way, their sharpness and subtleties lost to time, the memory remaining only of the fact that they had been sharp and subtle. This distant from it, with only the meagre ghosts of those emotions to hand, I am no longer so troubled by what once was.

There are days when I  sometimes feel like I am on a familiar path, when the black moods threaten and tiredness, despair and loss threaten. There are days when I feel teary for no reason, when my anger sparks and roils ever so briefly, when I suddenly find myself with the memory of a cloud above me. And those days I push back hard, mostly succeeding, sometimes stalemating, occasionally failing.

I don’t want to walk those paths again, but like many things, once you know the way you have to guard yourself against it. I wonder often where I would be today, what road or path I would have taken without the intervention of someone special, who stepped in at just the right moment, and against such improbable odds, did the right thing, said the right words in just the right way.

***

I stumble outside, approaching the toilet shack which, like most of the toilets in these mountains, is a simple wooden structure perched on the edge of the mountain. The snow is deep and crisp and I have to force the door open.

When I re-emerge I notice the air is remarkably still and calm. The sky is empty, encased in a glittering curtain of eternity. The mountains are snow-covered, serene and breathtaking in the brightness of the night, a sea of white peaks that stretches off beyond my eyes’ ken.

I stand there, staring out into that vast space, looking out onto mountains beautiful beyond words, and I am completely alone, a singular witness to something indescribable, and for that single eternal moment, nothing matters more than this.

a life full of regrets

A year ago today a very close friend of mine died. He died in a way both horrific and needless.

We were working together on a project one day, just chatting about stuff, and we clicked, and somehow, two people from different backgrounds, with different values and strengths became fast friends. He built two of my bikes for me, taught me more about walking in the hills than everyone else combined and was there when I needed him. And vice versa. I was there for him during the breakup of one relationship and the beginning of the relationship with she who would become his wife.

I hadn’t seen him or his wife for a year and a half prior to his death, and in truth, I had been avoiding them, something they never understood and I cannot begin to explain. Sometimes things just are, and nothing can excuse them.

But I regret it. I regret it with all my heart and all my soul. I thought I was doing the right thing and it turned out I wasn’t. I made a mistake and I utterly, completely regret it.

I regret many things. I regret a number of the actions I have undertaken. I regret the opportunities spurned in favour of that which was easier or less effortful. I regret some of the things I have thought and many of the things I have said. I regret those decisions of the past that constrain my life of the now.

Regret is part of life.

Yesterday I told a friend that she should take the opportunity given to her to travel, else she look back on her deathbed and regret not doing so. Today, whilst reading an excellent post about writing, writers and becoming one, the phrase resurfaced.

Sitting here, looking at this candle that reflects and commemorates the life of my friend, I realised something. My deathbed is too far away to have regrets. My deathbed is too final for me to recognise all that I have missed or done wrong by or failed in.

I need my regrets now, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to remind me not to end up looking at the candle, but to see its shape in my future. They are there to poke me and prod me into action; to apologise, to make amends, to curtail and to think again. They are the bedfellows of my conscience and my desires, of my hopes and of my dreams. They have a purpose beyond the prosaic.

I do not like having regrets, yet my life is full of them. When I was younger I was foolish and stupid and blind. When I was younger was only a moment ago. But I am working at it, trying to turn the regrets into reminders and lessons; taking on their message and making sure that the present me and the future me will always have less to be regretful for.

One candle in my life is more than enough to regret.

the moocher

He is tall, perhaps 6′ to 6’2″, his height made difficult to gauge by the hunch of his shoulders. He is slim, neither slender nor heavy, his face seemingly amused by the world around him. He is not a handsome man, a nose too prominent, hair grey and a little too long, his stoop at once complimenting and at odds with his ambling gait. His is the black bomber jacket, and jeans worn but clean, the pale blue fading to white with the seasons.

We called him the Moocher.

His is a steady walk, not purposeful but knowing, not strident but calm, each tread unmeasured and unweighty. His hands slip easily into his jean pockets, as if they were born there. His lips carry a half-smile, not of amusement and not of pain.

We have seen him everywhere, in this city of ours. The Moocher, walking along, whatever the weather, whatever the time, seemingly aimless. Calls and texts would fling their way across the city, a sighting here, a sighting there. A pattern would emerge, then fall apart, theories raised and discussed, argued over, and thrown away.

And yet he mooched. Step after step, and endless tour of the city, pacing out paths and mysteries invisible to our eyes, obtuse to our minds. Summer would turn to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring, and still he walked, the same smile, hunched against the sun or the rain, step after relentless step.

And he faded from our minds, for a time, only to return at the next sighting, at the next gathering of suspicion and conjecture, at each utterance of awe and respect.

The Moocher.

Today I sat outside a pub, at a table by the docks of this city, watching the world go by. Around me the gentle hubbub of conversation and laughter, of introspection and duelling wits. I sat, alone, my pen a reluctant tool in my hand, letting the city wash over me, the moments of hundreds of thousands of citizens surging and flowing around me, like the slow silent depths of the sea.

And I mourned for the Moocher.

He was not a wizard, or a guardian of the city, his steps a timeless defence against ancient and unknown perils. He was not a spy, a lunatic, a benevolent god walking amongst us nor a spiritwalker, seeking the paths of his ancestors. He was none of these things, not an angel, not a demon, not a prince torn from another world to dwell here in banishment.

He was a man, walking his path, day in, day out. A man who walked the streets of Bristol so often as to become a part of it, a texture in it’s illdefined membrane. He was a man, I realised, lost to his community; a man walking the edge of a vast divide, him on one side, the world on the other. His was not a walk of discovery, or seeking, but one of resignation, the endless pacing of a man who has lost everything but himself, a man, an individual, bereft of his tribe.

I sat there this day, watching the world wheel by; wondering that the scratching of pen on paper, the tapping of the keyboard, the books and the blogs, the endless introspection and self examination; was this the pacing in my head? Like the Moocher, hunched and half-smiling, will I walk the precipice of my own divide, trying to understand, seeing but oblivious, surrounded but cut off, in the midst of yet alone?

One day, will the Moocher be me?

let me…

My father died as a result of cancers suddenly sprouting within him, the pressure of one of these cutting off the majority of the blood supply to the upper half of his body and, more critically, his brain. In many ways this was a somewhat merciful release, given the confusion and fear he spent the last few years of his life in, mainly due to Alzheimer’s.

He was a proud and strong man, having served in the Second World War in the submarines and lived all over the world in the subsequent years. He was gregarious, loquacious and always the life and soul of the party. He was 52 when I was born and 56 when my brother was born.

By the time I had hit sixteen (many, many years ago) he was in physical decline, the ravages of time, a long working life and arthritis taking their effect, perhaps aided by the all too constant, but not excessive, imbibing of alcohol that became a fixture of his later years.

Having read the recent article by the author Sir Terry Pratchett (a firm favourite of mine), I have been thinking about the final days of both my father and myself quite a lot recently.

Morbid? Not really. I am both fascinated and appalled by the attitude to death that exists in the western world, the fear and loathing with which is approached and the sometimes almost sick perversity that it is revered. I believe that death is an integral part of life, a simple fact that we cannot avoid, no matter how hard we wish, no matter how desperately we apply our potions and our alchemies. Life should be celebrated, death accepted. Which is not to mean that you should not fight for life, if you are ill or at risk. The fight for life is a natural response and should not be impeded, unless the wish is otherwise.

Which brings me, after much meandering, to my point.

Let me die a youngman’s death (Roger McGough)

Let me die a youngman’s death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

I am 37 years old and I am not afraid of death. I do not want to die, but I do not fear it.

I fear the manner of it. I fear my father’s death. I fear the loss of mind, the loss of self, a prison not of the body but of the un-mind. I fear that every moment is a new one, tinged with terror that I cannot remember the countless moments that preceded it.

When I’m 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

I fear the dismantling of my body, that slow accretion of age and chemicals and damage that is even now beginning to slow me, to hurt and remind me of time’s relentless passage. I fear entrapment, not of the mind, but of the body, a constraint of incapability and immobility,where the flesh is hostage to other than the mind and the will.

Or when I’m 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber’s chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

I fear that sloughing of self, the mitigation and forgetfulness of time, where the bright days of my life, the memories of friendships and loves, the achievements and losses, when everything begins to dull and disappear, to fade against the exhaustion of the battle for life, when the meaning of it all is replaced by the numbing count of days survived.

Or when I’m 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman’s death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
‘what a nice way to go’ death

I want a death of my own choosing. A death with flair and wonder and meaning. I want a heroic death, defying odds beyond my ability to win. I want a daredevil death, my last breath spent in an exhilarated whoop as I fly over the edge of the precipice, the waterfall, or in a sigh of contentedness as the cold of a mountain seeps away my life at dawn. I want a savage death, beaten and broken in a silent war for something I believe in, protecting those few principles still left to me.

I want a death of such tragic consequence the world will mourn and wail and gnash their teeth and beat their heads. I want a death of such crass stupidity that people will mock and laugh until it becomes the stuff of urban legend. I want a poet’s death, selfish and drunk, fevered with dreams and inspiration.

I want a death that is not silent, and broken and lonely, faded to memory and time and dust. I want to die a death of style and verve and singular panache. A death the equal of me, the better of me, a manner of death that does not mock the life before it but punctuates it with an awesome finality.

I want to die a young man’s death.

its a book world

I learnt to read when I was six. Of course I had learnt to ‘read’ before then, but the words and sentences didn’t really make much sense nor did it seem that there should be a reason for them to.

When I was six we moved to Papua New Guinea, arriving in that alien world from a temporary stay in Peterborough in the UK. My father had taken a job as a civil engineer for the PNG government, a post they had held open for him for over three years. I don’t remember that much about our arrival in Port Moresby, only that we had to stay some time as the guests of the local representative for some weeks whilst our home in Kainantu was finalised.

To keep me out of trouble I was given a pile of the local comics to read, primarily those of the Phantom (the Ghost Who Walks). I was hooked. I could only follow the stories in the pictures but it soon became apparent that I was missing a great deal of information and story. Without realising it, frustration drove me to connect the letters to words, the words to sentences and the sentences to meaning. I began to read.

I became a voracious reader, the libraries in the schools I attended became a vast reservoir wonder and exploration. I remember trying to read the Silmarillion on more than one occasion, albeit unsuccessfully. I was eight. When we moved back to the UK I continued to read ravenously, my limited pocket money strained by football, arcades and books. I read the Commando comics, whole series of abridged myths and legends, game books and fantasy books and crime and all sorts of stuff.

The local libraries in Hampshire once held an initiative to encourage reading; over the course of two weeks you had to read at least six books, answering questions to prove you had read them, with the reward of a certificate if you achieved this heady target. There was also a special prize for the child who read the most books during that period, a fact that I was oblivious to. I read thirty-three books during those two weeks, coming only second, in the whole county, to a girl from Aldershot who had read thirty-six books. I didn’t care, it was the books that mattered. I was twelve.

For a while, after the disastrous excursion that was university, I worked in bookselling, a job I loved and enjoyed thoroughly, and a job that fed my book habit incessantly. I bought books with almost involuntary fervour, until my bedroom overflowed with them. In one flat the ends of the stairs became bookshelves, every ledge and nook and cranny a haven of the written word. Today my study is stuffed to the brim, with the bookcases on the landing and downstairs barely relieving the pressure.

Ten years ago I went to San Francisco, taking my book-soulmate with me. There we were introduced to the joyous delights of the Green Apple and City Lights bookstores. I went to theUSA with six books, my BSM with four. We returned to the UK with 52 and 49 respectively, in the main the result of one day in Green Apple Books, a day that my cousins still mention with a wry grin. Pilgrim Books on Kathmandu was another memorable discovery, although only a very few books were bought there. Today Hay-on-Wye is a bookshop Mecca for me, with Beware of the Leopard in Bristol another firm favourite. There are numerous little bookshops in the Cotswolds that are great too, although I visit them too rarely.

I buy books at a rate that out-paces my ability to read, and I read quickly and often. That is the way of things, my weekly purchases threatening the integrity of my To-Read pile. I do not care, one day I will have read them all, no matter how far off in the future that is.

I have friends who Do Not Read. Not ever. Not once. An old flatmate borrowed the same book for every holiday for three and a half years, and there were lots of holidays. He never finished it. Another just reads business books. That’s what she reads, she has no patience for anything else, and doesn’t get fiction. I don’t understand either of them.

I love books, I love the feel of them, the sight of them on the shelf. I love the heft and smell and symbolism of them. But most of all I love the words and stories contained within, that wondrous magic through which the writer communicates. I love the invisible effort that was poured into each book, the tales and the telling. I love the wild imagination, the detail vividly drawn, I love the research and intensity and frivolity. I love the care, the attention, the passion and the love.

I love books because they hold the stories, the endeavours and the dreams of our species. They hold what has been, what was dreamt, and what is and what may be. And beyond that they are the vessels for our inventiveness, our cunning, courage and cleverness. They hold our diversity and our commonality. They are a testament to our successes and failures, our aspirations and depravities. In their unthinkable multitude they are the essence of us, both real and unreal, and they speak to us with the countless voices of those who undertake to comprehend the wonder that is humanity.

I love books because, on any level, they are simply what they are, and remain exactly that for each of us.

kainantu, papua new guinea

Related to the previous post, images of what was once my home, courtesy of kahunapulej.

memory

Sometimes smells get me. It has happened to all of us at one time or another, the waft and flavour of something triggers a reaction, a memory or another sense.

There is a smell. It is a hot pavement smell. But not just hot. Very hot. And there is the dust. Dust beaten by the relentless ferocity of the sun, stirred gently by a threadbare wind.

There is a moment. A moment where I am standing on a street that is unaccustomed to heat, in a land usually drenched in rain and gloom. And then I am not.

It is hot. I am walking down a street? A path. The path is not of concrete, but of earth and stone and dust. The heat is relentless, the discomfort punctuated by the brief respite of tree-spun shade. Ahead of me lies the town, behind me the voices of my brother, our friends and their mother. I am walking on a dirt path high in the mountains, in a land of mountains and jungle and heat.

We are walking to Kainantu. It has been over a year since we moved here, and in a few months time we will be gone, prudence for our safety more than overcoming my father’s formidable courage. In less than a year he will be kidnapped at knifepoint, and only the cliche of a dive from a moving car saves him from death. We will move because of it.

I am not yet eight.

The day is hot and we are going into town to visit my mother and do some shopping. I am too young to recognise the ramshackle nature of the place, or to fully understand that the men hanging around, waiting to spend their kina on alcohol and betelnut, are casualties of an economy and world not of their making.

It is hot, but the thought of frozen juice is in my mind, anticipated with a child’s singular delight.

That morning we had raced down the valley side on which our house perched, the cardboard sleds protecting us from laser sharpness of the tall grasses as we hurtled to the valley floor. We did it time and time again, breathless with exertion and excitement. Across the valley is the crude golf course the expats had constructed years before. On Sunday my father will sit on our porch, whisky in hand, and play Scotland the Brave to golfers at full volume, just as he does every Sunday. Theirs will be a ribald and affectionate salute.

We go to school in a dumper truck, a mass of laughter and shouts and excitement piled haphazardly in the back. The missionaries who teach us treat us all with a care and attention and a fairness that I do not recognise as unordinary. We are many; native, white, black, asian and mixed. We are children.

I am not yet eight and I have been into the bush and into the villages and seen women birth into the dirt. I have seen sing-sings and sat in the midst of battles of spears and guns and teargas. I have climbed trees and paddled in rivers. I have walked and explored and adventured, with only my dog Whisky at my side.

I am walking down the path, to see my mother, and later, when the sun starts to set, my father will be home, and I am looking forward to seeing them both together.

And then I am standing on a pavement, in a land removed by time and distance and memory, with tears in my eyes.