About The Boy
A momentous day for Boy. The Thursday that starts his exams. He opts for walking to school, maximising fresh-air time.
‘You’ve revised for this,’ says me, in pep talk mode, ‘you’ve trained, like Rocky, you can do this!’
He puts his fists up. He is ready. He goes out of the door, punching like a montage shot. This is mainly to humour his mother.
When he was barely three, sat in an aeroplane, Mum showed him the white view from the lozenge shaped window.
She tells him, perfectly straight faced, to look out for polar bears.
‘That’s not snow, Mum,’ says the Boy, carefully breaking news, ‘That’s cloud.’
Girl’s laughter bounces off the window, squeals round the plane like a tiny monkey.
‘I can do this!’ Punch, punch, smile hovering at the polite edge of patronising. Dog studies him, as this may be a new signal for imminent walk around fields. Clouds thicken, and if I were looking for a sign, this would not be ominous.
Comments
'lozenge' = perfect.
Amanda- I like how you have worked out the parameters of your role. Deep breaths!
Suze- The association of plane windows and lozenges arose whilst squeezing a sweet in my mouth on descent- my ears don't like this bit of flying.