I’m on the 13:23 train from London to Northampton, with a belated Christmas gift in my back pack: “The Illustrated World War II.”
Every station stop is a memory of his previous life: cricket games at Oval; my childhood in Johannesburg; the factory he built in China; and our family home in Brazil.
‘I’m here to see Terence.’
‘We call him Terry.’ They give me a friendly hand shake. ‘There he is.’
The man sitting in a corner of the living room doesn’t recognise me. Dad hands me cake he was eating and smiles.
I sit down and smile back.
There’s a multitude in here. Poignant (what life brings at its different stages; the substitution by strangers of the name almost creating a different person of the person who no longer recognises), and happy (the smile, the cake, the friendly handshake).
So concise and so poignant, Ollie.