On Lemonade and Connections.

When I was a kid, my parents used to like driving to a country pub some evenings for a drink. Being a kid, I had to go with them, and British pubs weren’t child friendly in those days so I had to stay in the car. My stepfather always brought me a packet of crisps and a small bottle of lemonade with a straw. I didn’t like lemonade, and occasionally asked for something else. I got lemonade. I didn’t like straws either; I wanted a glass. I got a straw. Being grateful for small mercies was the lesson, I think.

It doesn’t take long to drink a small bottle of lemonade – even when you dislike the stuff – and eat a small packet of crisps, so the following three hours were a bit tedious. I had no portable games, and what books I possessed had been read to death. There isn’t much for a child to explore on a pub car park, so I filled the empty hours with my thoughts. I don’t remember feeling rejected as such – a little sidelined maybe, a little resentful of the lemonade, but mainly just bored. I suspect I was feeling the first stirrings of the need to be independent of my parents and everybody else.

But maybe there was something else going on in that kid’s little brain, because he haunts me occasionally. He’s haunting me today for some reason. I keep remembering the time we were on holiday in Devon. My parents knew a couple who lived down there, and pub visits were frequent. That year, though, the woman’s elderly mother was staying with them – a wizened old Welsh lady with a stiff gait caused by bowed, ageing legs. She was kind and stayed with me in the car, telling me stories from her life, and especially the time she'd spent in the Australian outback living among the aboriginals. She told me they’d taught her things about the mysteries of life, and said she would pass them onto me when she thought I was old enough to understand. I think I was twelve at the time. When we went back to Devon the following year, she was dead.

All of which is probably good preparation for a life spent observing without connecting. And maybe even being grateful for small mercies.