I Always Stay Too Long

It's been unseasonably warm here. I take the children out to the front of our house, to the pavilion where I once imagined twin girls running, where I once watched my little ghost jump up and down.

Jessica find the remnants of a puddle and splashes in it. Reuben tries to join her but is gently rebuked and directed to a 'baby' puddle. Not even a puddle. Just a darker, damp patch on the tarmac. An echo of moisture. He stamps hopefully but no spray comes up.

I sit in the shelter of the pavilion. It's been ruined now. As most things left outside and unattended in suburban England inevitably are. The glass smashed, the wood splintered. I won't draw the parallels because you don't need me to do so. But it was, once, quite nice. Green and glossy. Back in 2007.

I find a snail. I like snails. With their one large foot and their cautious peering eyes. I pick him up. Thinking to move him away as it is getting hot and he would probably be better off away from the path and under a bush. As I lift him, I notice he is dead. That his soft, slow body has slowed off to a permanent halt.

As I lift him higher, I notice that somebody has put a cigarette out in him. I suspect that this is probably why he is dead.

I pick him up and put him under the bushes anyway. Poor little soul, I think to myself. There is fellow feeling here. I see you. Mr. Snail. There you were, swooshing along, minding your own business. When somebody picked you up and decided to put out a cigarette on you. I'm so sorry. I don't know why that would happen. Life is so very odd and cruel. And I sigh and I find that I'm crying.

'It's ok,' he replies. From beyond this vale of tears. 'Sometimes life just works out this way. I had fun swooshing along in my snail-y way. It was a good life here. There were green plants and rain and other snails. But now I'm dead. And it's ok. Don't cry.'

I wonder how it came to this. That I am having internal conversations with a dead snail. And that I have a strange sense of camaraderie with my new, presumably murdered, friend. That I feel closer to a snail, with a cigarette end embedded in his body, than to my neighbours walking over just there. Who wave and say hello.

"Hello, lovely day isn't it?" I reply.

I wonder how they can possibly fail to notice that I am speaking to them from the bottom of a well. Inhabited only by me and a dead snail, curled around an extinguished cigarette butt.

***

I take Reuben for a walk in his buggy this morning. The sun is so warm. Every cell, every atom, every space between the atoms that compose the blob that is me seem to lean towards it. To the extent that I'm vaguely astonished to find that I'm still walking along upright. Not leaning at some unlikely angle to the pavement.

What a strange, strange chance. To be alive. To have a skin to feel the sun upon.

What a mystery. The mystery. Why me? Why not her?
Behold, I tell you a mystery.
Or maybe I won't. Who knows. It's all smoke and mirrors from here on in.

'It's ok child,' the sun winks at me. 'It's ok little ant-child. You aren't built to understand all this with your small pathetic brain. Don't worry. Just feel the warmth on your skin. It's only going to last so long anyway.'

***

So I'm here. Years on. Feeling that I have stayed too long. Even here. In this place where everyone is sad and battling to understand.

Years on, where I am talking to snails and to the sun. Feeling out of kilter with it all. Perhaps that is just where I am meant to remain. Out of season. With no response.

That I will endure until I no longer have to. But I'm tired. Tired of missing her and tired of trying to make some sort of sense of afterwards.

Sometimes I miss the sort of life this song is about. Although it's not of my generation. I've certainly never danced to it anyway. Too old. But nights out, perhaps especially English nights out, don't change that much over the decades. Although it's been a long time since I was in attendance. In those strange little social clubs and odd places you end up in. If you're in the habit of staying too long. As I certainly was.

But I'd just like to care less, to drink myself into oblivion, to just stop feeling and analysing and trying to make everything make some kind of sense. And this song reminds me of when I lived in London and was eighteen and wasn't friends with a dead snail.

Please take me back there. Just for a night. Please.

Warning - Like an English night out this song contains a lot of alcohol and offensive language. And it has one of those annoying advert things at the beginning.