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It
is New Year’s Eve 1969 and David has much to
look forward to. He has managed to stay up until
midnight, unlike the previous year, and he is
the life and soul of the party. He mingles with
the guests carrying his pint of dandelion and
burdock and proffering what his mother calls
“savoury bites” of cocktail sausages, pineapple
chunks, freshly skewered from a Del Monte tin,
and Cheshire cheese cubes, all delicately
presented on cocktail sticks stuck in a foil
wrapped half a grapefruit.
If he could freeze time he would do it now, in a
room full of laughing family and friends with
him hovering between childhood and adulthood
dispensing bonhomie and savoury bites.
But he cannot freeze time and the coming decade
will bring him to the realisation that such
moments are fleeting and the time between them
is often punctuated by bewildering changes,
trials and setbacks.
On this night he is only aware of certainties.
By the time he is preparing to celebrate the
arrival of the next decade his world will be
immeasurably larger and the distance between
people, experiences and the Reso and his new
world will have expanded beyond recognition
leaving everything in his life an accelerating
blur.
But for this one evening full of promise he has
only the order in which to kiss the younger and
prettier of his aunties to worry about and on
the distant horizon the move to secondary school
in the coming September. Life will not get any
sweeter it seems.
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