0173 Memory's Fast Rewind

Sometimes memory runs back like an instant fast rewind like it’s said to do at death and hits you wham between the eyes with your own life today – what, November 19 – I was chilling out in the pub again relaxing into life and there, framed in the window was a lady (as she was today) crossing the road dressed, this cool-cold day, in black tights and a woollen two-piece suit in Christmas red, and the red… took me back so many years that I didn’t know whether to be grateful for the glimpse, or regret the fast grey years between… it must have been when I was two and a half and for the first time in my life my parents sought a hint (first time in their lives too) about The Big One for my Christmas – walked oh so casually with me through the glittering store as if for no-one, everyone, anyone but me … and there it was – the pedal car in gleaming, buy-me red with all the details I still can’t bear to describe enamelled like a glimpse of paradise and sure enough, come Christmas Day there it was – except – (I punctuate like Emily D when out of breath…) in blue how can a child be adult enough to be grateful for a second-best? And how can parents be a child again and know? I had forgotten until now how the seasons had their colours – pink Valentines almost merging into complex mauve in Easter cards, and icing, marzipan, and yellow chicks, summer days needing no coloured herald but the sun then autumn colours ambivalent with the apprehension of new classes, and new threats… and all this time, at just this time of year Christmas red shouts loud its herald’s trumpet of paradise; promised; lost; perhaps, regained