5th Feb was a Friday.
A day to dream through and ignore. Not that I hadn't been sleepwalking for months, probably since June '09. Stroke week, when for a few days I entirely ceased to exist. And when I came back I was ageless, my birth date reduced to yearless month, a blurred amalgam of myself.
This was my weekend. For me. About something else. I wasn't heading home to jump in the car and get on the A1 to the other home.
Guilt and joy, my twin companions. I ran.
To the station through rush hour commuters and Friday night revellers and headed to Kent, to an untarmac-ed lane and the company of buenos amigos, the oldest and bestest.
And the birthdayest.
With fish and chip. And Max the moo cow patterned cat and Molly the hoover of a labrador, despite her pedigree.
Giant White Company duvets to snuggle under.
Borrowed wellies and daytime drinking. Fresh air on my face and not the incessant mechanised drone of the oxygen converter.
Fabulous food in high camp surroundings, wearing an Eton tie as a belt.
And all against the background of the ticking of the clock.
Time isn't moveable. You don't get to choose. And I could feel it. Even from 4.5 hours away, the change was in the wind.
I had to get back to where my car was. The consequence was no longer hanging in the stars.
Monday 8th, we were drinking tea and talking inconsequentially when suddenly something in the usually Darth Vadar-esque background noise changed.
There was no disturbance in the force, like the day before when I somehow knew that the last grains of sand where in the offing. It was all sonic.
He had never opened his eyes that day. I don't know if he knew I was there.
And he never opened them again.
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