Day 6 of April 2016

I wrote this long ago. My last English relative had just died. Now I had no reason to go back. (But I have, more than once.)

Trains (of thought) to Victoria Station

The sun rises as I open my eyes for a trip around the world of my mind. Many stops will be shortened due to lack of funds; blood rushes to the brain as I stand on my head in a railway station lavatory. Tickets, who's got the tickets? I have, said the blind conductor, smiling as he walks away from the platform breaking into a hideous sidesplitting laughter heard all the way across the Atlantic. See you on the other side of hell, chirped the magpie priest as he doffed his miter with a two-foot blade of her Majesty's finest Wilkinson.

Perhaps prayers are in order; if sent by express post, they'll make it by Monday (only decades late for redemption) (only half­way to securing a rite of atonement) after the half-past four tea-time surrounding the Battenberg cakes left out for the paper-boy bringing by yesterday's news. Maybe if I just close me eyes, all the puzzle pieces will fall into place on the hardwood table left to me by my mother's uncle on her father's side; a present tied up with a striking red bow dripping sanity.

[1998]