A dramatic pause
Never give a pessimist time to ponder
“I’ve come to a decision.”
She paused, like a bake-off host announcing the winner.
In that pause, I conjured new futures and wrote revised histories. I saw my world collapse, drew a line under the past, and set off on adventures. I went travelling and was robbed in shanty towns.
I worked my passage home on a tramp steamer (whatever that is), and found new meaning in mundanity. I learned Spanish, and the guitar. Then found, and quickly lost, religion, before starting my own. It went quite well.
I became an airline pilot, took up sky-diving, and failed to master surfing. I bought a motorbike, even though I hate them and can’t ride. Politics became my passion and I stood for Parliament, determined to make a difference. And left, a broken man, under a cloud of disappointment and accusation.
I grew an unlikely mid-life-crisis-pony-tail and married again. Soon divorced, I lost everything to a twenty-five-year-old gold-digger who took me to the cleaners. My children sided with their mother, I couldn’t blame them. Finally, I marked time, staring out of a window in a damp bedsit onto a bleak, rain-swept landscape. Sad and alone.
“We’re having fish for dinner.”
Ah.
