I went into the kitchen musing on this unfortunate state of
affairs and decided that I would have liked to be around a movie theatre when
it was being shown. It amused me to think that I could have run onto the stage
just before the lights went down and yelled to the audience: Hey, everybody. The kid dies. There are
times when eschewing the spoiler alert is indeed a blessing.
Sorry, Americans, but this is something to which you appear to be habitually prone.
You will insist on losing the plot and loading the bowl of pathos with so much
sugar that the brew becomes unpalatable.
* * *
But then that phrase ‘the kid dies’ reminded me of one of my
earliest memories. I was around six when I was taken to see an old British film
called A Kid for Two Farthings. I
well remember bawling so loudly when the young goat died that I had to be
removed from the auditorium because I was irritating the rest of the audience.
I think I was even told off for it by my mother, but I might have imagined that
bit. (I always was a martyr to guilt.)
The point is that if one of the humans had died I wouldn’t
have given a tuppeny toss. But the goat? The other memory I have is of wanting
the man responsible for the animal’s demise to be killed slowly, methodically
and painfully. I got over it, of course; I’ve never been one to bear grudges
for very long. And yet I wonder whether that little incident was the source of
my loathing for mawkishness.
* * *
And then another thought occurred to me. Back in the days
when I was of interest to attractive young ladies, I never met one who invited
me back to her place and won my affection with the words: ‘Would you like to come
and meet my goat?’ What an event that would have been; I think it might even
have beaten ‘may I make you a baked Alaska?’
to the gold medal of fond memories, but the sun of abundant fortune never
smiled quite strongly enough.
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