That spring of my 32nd year came upon us fierce. The gales in March swept the last of the remaining cars off the sea front stretch and battered the old Pier straight into the water. One night the entire facade of our seafront hotel came crashing down, taking half the occupants with it. Jay and I clawed through the wreckage, our faces white with shock, our legs and arms scratched to pieces on the wood and brick and glass that held so tightly onto our neighbours corpses. Any survivors there may have been did not wait for us to find them. There were no friends there, no one close to mourn for but we knew then already that it would not be long before we had to quit this place.

***

I can still see Jay now. His life stretches out before me, a landscape of memories and I see him as he was then. I watch him grow all over again into the beautiful young man I loved so much. Like his father in so many ways. Like his mother. And he looked to me. In those years we spent together he looked to me as brother, father, mother, friend. I was all those things to him. Even when we fought and hated each other nothing would have driven us apart. Now I am free to be where ever I please, and he is long gone, it is to those years I return and for a while I feel his tiny hand in mine as we walk together along and over the windswept hills of New England.

***

We moved inland a few blocks and found a terraced house battered and boarded up but otherwise sound enough for the coming summer. When it wasn't storming, a heavy thick and warm mist would descend upon the town. March was nerve racking. It was harder to stay hidden away here. On the front the very fury of the sea and the difficulty of moving around was protection. The people who lived there had, like us, their own reasons to stay hidden and we had maintained a polite and firm silence. The square we lived in now housed 10 or 12 families and a score of single men and women. There was a comfort in the smell of

wood smoke hanging in the fog that encouraged people to linger in their walks, to smile at each other and stand and talk. The bar on the corner of the street rang with song, music and dance three out of seven nights and it wasn't long before we began to regret our enforced solitude and long for the heat of human fire.

***
Another night, memories skipped across time: The Liberty Bar in Free Camden. There was an Irish band playing, a flute dancing us all to distraction. We were drunk mostly and I was swimming in sentiment, gushing to everyone I met. So many friends, our hearts all grown together. My parents were there, Michael of course and Patricia. Upstairs, hidden away, directing things. I had been on the streets all day following the demonstrations. We had maybe 300,000 of our people in the city blocking off roads, barricading office buildings. One enterprising group of kids had taken out Black Friars Bridge with an explosion that sent a cloud of smoke a mile into the sky. No one was hurt thanks to the dedicated work of the Sisters of Mis-convenience. East of London car hell was happening and in the City the only vehicles making any progress were carrying riot police and the worldwide media. There were a lot of angry people. A lot of people who thought they were rich had just discovered they had been lied to and a lot of people who had dreamed of becoming rich had just woken up to the real future facing them. The world stopped turning that day and when it started again we made sure it would never be the same again. [ if Michael hadn’t been so inspired and Patricia hadn’t been so damned organised]

God but it was exciting to be alive that day. It felt like everyday of my life, growing up at Hope farm, everything we had ever been taught, everything that Patricia had ever promised us was coming true that day. And Michael was with us again. Michael! Michael! Michael! The music played louder and louder and the lights on the ceiling jumped in time to the dancing feet!