It is an afternoon of echoes.
It is a 50+ year old echo, a little faint but there.
Faint and smelling of Blackberry Jam
an echo of childhood forever gone
but always just around the corner
faint and smelling of the pressure cooker
full of this year’s Ballinrees Blackberries
in the process of becoming jam.
L3C’s algebra homework is being marked
by my father deep in the Red Parker Knoll
Wee Sammy’s failure to grasp why X=4 is
being highlighted in red ink, red ink sucked
into a proper pen from a bottle of Quink Ink
sitting on the sideboard.
The TV has been switched on, it is humming
yet the screen is still dark. The alchemist
that lives inside that dark wood box has lit his
Bunsen burner but the crucible is not yet warm
enough to bring the screen to magical life.
It will start soon, I will soon know if Polly, Ben and
the Doctor will escape the cell they were locked in
a week ago and defeat the Daleks.
I check that all is in order, i am ready. This is MY time,
this is my show, he is my friend, i will grow up and leave this
room walk through that blue door and become a
companion. This I know sure as sure can be.
My father’s pen squeaks as another equation gets
corrected. The music starts, the screen melts into
the magic lines and the doctor’s face appears and
I move into my world for 30 minutes a world filled
of wonders and wibbly wobbly timey wimey
and it smelling slightly of blackberry jam.
