He used to sit, or was that stand ,just by or as he remembers it below the aged piece of brown heavy furniture, on which the TV sat and whose draws he had often frisked  through, looking for secrets or more likely just something to do or fiddle with or steal.. He can’t remember what was in them now, possibly napkins, old batteries, glue sticks, liquid paper. It comes back to him that they might have been packed tightly so to get right in there you would have had to lift something out.  That was too risky. It would be too difficult to recover if the door swung open and one of his parents walked in. He must have only looked around the edges then.

It’s a summer’s day in the holidays and he’s waiting to see if  two friends were cmng around to play. There was no planning around this, they either came or they didn’t. He badly needed the company.

It might not be summer now, but he was in the same room above the shop where his parents worked at avoiding each other as much as possible. At meal times  they would bury their respective heads in a newspaper each and we’d eat in silence. My father who was up to get the papers in at 5 or 6am would have a nap in the lounge after lunch. There would be more quiet until he resumed his shift into the evening. 

It was morning , before or after breakfast, probably winter. He was playing a carpet top football game, possibly with his brother. They weren’t that close. One of his earliest memories was of his father hitting his mother.  So he was used to arguing in the house, moods, silence, mummy undermining his father in front of customers in the shop. It all made him feel really lost, terrified to move or to decide anything.  So when there was a loud crash, he might have paused for a moment from his game where he might have been trying to surprise himself by being  goalkeeper and  striker at the same time. This was the sound of parents not loving each other and the crash was like a clap of thunder arisng from the tension in the air. 

Predictable when the air gets too close.  

Across the road from the shop , right on the corner  up a small hill was a small grocers. A diary van was parked outside the shop, or Fields as we knew it. That morning the driver had either forgotten to button up his hand brake or otherwise he had and it was faulty. While he was inside passing a crate of milk  to Mr or Mrs Field the van had tipped  backwards and rolled down the hill. The sound of the simmering argument between his parents erupting was the rear of the milk wagon crashing through the front of the shop right underneath my imaginary football game.     

It was cold. The winters were really cold, right by the sea. He walked to school whatever the weather. He can’t remember the exact route he took. It might well have been via the gym at Dry grounds, probably because crossing the main road was safer there. It was nothing to do with him but one day someone drowned the school by turning on all taps in all bathrooms and putting  the taps in. The smell of those damp carpets in the teachers room stay with you. The snorkel parka coat, the purple and black rugby kit that occasioning missed a wash between classes,  the hard ground , the welsh PE teacher shouting at you addressing you by your sir name, dancing queen at a Friday disco you sunk away from; all those things stay with you.