Simple Pleasures

Every now and then, life will throw you one of those rare, magical moments that you’ll remember until all the Facebook status updates about Twilight finally melt your brain.

I took the bus into Newmarket the other day to pick up the Polo. It had been raining as I’d set off, but on arrival the sky  cleared a little, leaving fresh, dewy air and the early evening sun in its wake. As I stepped off the bus, I realised that the shopping centre I usually used as a short-cut was locked for the night, so rather than walk around the multi-storey car park which lay between myself and the high street, I decided to cut through it.

The ramp which appeared to lead up to the main road beyond was just opposite me, though deserted of its usual push-chair traffic. The whole place felt abandoned, the noise of the rush-hour outside echoing off the pillars within like the ghost of the morning commute. Seeing this place so empty, so different and other, made me slightly giddy. I felt as though I was trespassing – a strange interloper in a world which belonged firmly to four wheels.

I continued up the ramp regardless – defiant – however I was met with a barrier, separating me from my destination. The path I had been following continued on though, doubling back on itself and rising above its original course. I checked my watch – I had time to see where it went.

I climbed on, emerging beneath a flat concrete roof and behind a small shed. I had no idea where I was, but the covering led me to believe I was still within the building proper. How wrong I was. Stepping out from behind the small structure, I found myself on the top of the car park, staring at a chess board of empty parking spaces.

I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun by myself. The total freedom on that roof was intoxicating – there was no one there to watch me, to see me run around in silence with arms stuck out pretending to be an aeroplane. There was no one to see me skip down the up ramp to the level below and run, hell-for-leather, back up again. When I’d finally finished playing out my frustration at all manner of insignificant things, I walked back down, cut around my secret playground and rejoined the world of adults going about their business.

Ashes to Ashes

I almost crashed on the way to the funeral.

I’d moved into the fast lane of the A1 north to let a car join from a slip road, however said car – a beat up Ford Fiesta – was only going at 30mph and decided to pull out into the inner lane, forcing me to do an emergency stop from about 75mph. Had I been in my old Polo, I wouldn’t have been able to stop – I thank the motoring powers-that-be that I bought my lovely little Micra, if only for its impressive breaks.

They squeak now, incidentally.

It got me thinking as I set off again, following a brief pause to get my breath back, about how fragile life is. We exist on a precipice where the tiniest event, if unexpected, can bring about disaster.

Seeing G-’s coffin made that feeling real. I always think of coffins as being colossal things but they’re not – in reality they’re just tiny boxes containing the sad remains of what was once an entire universe. When a person dies, it’s not just their body which stops, not just their voice and the abstract knowledge that they are ‘somewhere’. Their entire way of seeing the world ceases – from their opinions of music to the slightly different shade of blue their eyes pick up when looking at the sky. I think about the living – about the energy we radiate that makes us twice the size we physically are – and coffins begin to seem even smaller.

We leave behind pictures, scattered scraps of writing, and large, carved stones but really, no matter how hard we try to make our mark, we leave nothing. Our generation and perhaps the next will remember us, but beyond that… we’re little more than names.

I’ve decided to write down what I know of my family tree in case later generations are curious. Instead of a list of names and dates though, I’m scribbling a few facts about what the people I know are like. It won’t do them justice, but at least it’ll give future generations an idea of who we were… like I said before, the concept of the universe being deprived of my mother is not something I like to think about.