Remembering the A68 by Anne Pia
Remembering the A68
How well I remember this way and this road we chose
for our night escapes,
our journeys south
the promise of Scotch Corner
the smooth, easy tarmac finally of the M1
its warming lights adding glitz to your glamour
to your legs and your lipstick, to my fine cropped style,
my trophy from another life .
We abandoned our sleeping city, leaving it to burrow for its dreams,
those prima donnas of cafe life… the gruffness of Gaggia, toils of an ice cream freezer,
the fragility of espresso.
Maybe in those giddy days in the dales and our search for a good gin and tonic
we were hoping for Hollywood, life in a Rat Pack
and one of us would be Shirley McLean.
Could we have seen me now, then?
My life’s years piled high and heavy
the flotsam and makeshift of my days
barely ten years behind the age when you probably did finally find those answers
to the questions we spoke of in our last conversation
you were so hungry to hear
you knew then how to recognise endings.
How easily the daughter becomes the mother.
An anthology of modern short fiction recounting the quirkiness of the everyday, featuring DJ Mac and others.
DJ Mac is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland who fouters (dithers) with an itchy, scratchy pen in the moments when the bewilderment provoked by life settles. He is easily distracted by the bright pictures in his gallery.
