Tempus fugit,
and all that …
Mellow fruitfulness? It’s autumn in North Wales and I pull off the expressway and down to the big roundabout at Abergele. I run into the convenience store, donning my mask and sanitizing my hands, and a minute later I’m sitting in the car again and enjoying a particularly delicious meat and potato pie. Yes, autumn is in the air. It always makes me feel a bit wistful,
from Nottingham all the way to Colwyn Bay took us winding
the passing of another summer and the advent of September
through the many small towns of Cheshire and North Wales,
and October. And as I rest in the car and bite into my pie, I
through the very middle of all those pleasant and perfectly
suddenly realise I’m sitting in a spot I haven’t visited since
nice places such as Holywell and St Asaph and yes, Abergele.
I was eight years old, and which has a special bitter-sweet
My Mum and Dad, for various reasons I still don’t completely
place in my autumnal memories…
understand even now that I’m nearly 70, were taking me several hundred miles away from home, to deposit me in
Not so sure about the mellow fruitfulness – the pie is
a boarding school and leave me in the hands of complete
excellent, laced with a rich brown gravy, but there’s an
strangers and then drive away again.
aftertaste of hand-sanitizer too, which we’ve all had to get used to over the past year or so, whenever we’ve nipped in
Dad had just bought a beautiful new car. It was a Rover three-
and out of a store and enjoyed a snack in the car.
litre, two-tone grey and blue, with cream leather upholstery. I’d been sitting in the back with my brother, not so much
Abergele roundabout… I was eight years old in September
sitting as sliding this way and that (long before seat belts
1960, long before the expressway was built. Our journey
were invented), and feeling sick with the nervous fear of being taken away to school as well as with the intoxicating
YES, AUTUMN IS IN THE AIR. IT ALWAYS MAKES ME FEEL A BIT WISTFUL, THE PASSING OF ANOTHER SUMMER AND THE ADVENT OF SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER
smell of the upholstery. We stopped in Abergele. I mean, we stopped. The big, powerful, purposeful car spluttered to a standstill, as a cloud of blue smoke came puthering out of the bonnet. Dad, understandably, was fuming too. He strode across the road to the garage which was there on the roundabout… a proper garage and workshop, where today there’s a car showroom and a convenience store, and in a little while he’d
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