Entry for 1st June, 2008

I took a walk from the office at lunchtime today down the street where I lived as a kid. It is a tree-lined street in the middle of Hamilton, and it is nice to walk down it on a Summer's day. It is much the same as when I was wee. The gardens are all neat. The same big copper beech grows in the church gardens. The cars still crunch on the red-chipped driveways as the owners nip home for lunch.
One of my earliest memories is of walking along a wall on that street holding my mum's hand. The wall is still the same; studded with the stumps of an old iron fence, chopped down to make bombers in World War 2. That wall is probably partially responsible for the firebombing of Dresden. I even remember where there is a little chunk missing from the wall that I used as a step when I was three. I am probably the world's foremost expert on that piece of wall. And still they do not offer me my honorary PhD. The academic mafia continue to snub me.
It made me feel a bit sad to be thinking of my walks down the road with my mum all those years ago. I felt as if I might see her walking towards me from the other end of the street, or that she might pull out our old garage in her Triumph Herald.
She didn't of course, but it is a shame that the arrow of time only points one way eh?