1994

I am sitting in a park on a sunny day. Around me are families or smaller fractions of families out enjoying the summer weather and happy to be in each other’s company. This is not something I have ever really known, so I choose not to dwell on it and instead think about something else, as thinking about that may bring back The Old Troubles, as Dr Jamieson would phrase it. I focus my attention instead on a small girl – aged maybe about five – with an older man, who might be her grandfather. He is helping her sail a model boat out on the pond in the middle of the park. They both take a childish and touching fascination in the task. It seems that the boat is radio-controlled in some way, and he is showing her how to pilot it about the water and around the island of elephant grass and pampas that sits in the centre of the pool. They laugh a lot. Maybe he built the boat for her. Maybe he will keep it for the rest of her life, or pass it to her own children one day. Maybe she will always remember this moment every time she sees it and remember her late grandfather with fondness and affection.

I mentally transport both of them to my back bedroom which I have emptied of all furniture and floor coverings. I take them both and lock them in there without explanation or warning, passing only food and water through a hatchway in the door. I will keep them there for as long as it takes. I observe them through the holes I have drilled in the loft floor, making detailed notes about their condition. I have several issues I need to address.

It’s the sheer level of self-justification that really ought to trouble me in moments like this. But it seldom does.

Ducks quack around us all. Motor boats sail. Times come. Times go.