My Story

My story was a Mystery. That sounds glib, but it’s true. It turned up one day in my red Silvine memo book that I kept in the inside pocket of my jacket.  Nobody else had access to it. The handwriting, true, was similar to mine, but I could tell or thought I could tell that there was something about it that made it somebody else’s handwriting.  Imagine my puzzlement bordering on shock.  On a trip to the tall buildings of the capital, I silently read it to myself while sitting on an underground train between the Oval and Elephant & Castle. The lights flickered from time to time and, beneath me, the seat juddered. I had pulled out the memo book to find a telephone number.  Why here? My mobile wouldn’t work underground. Well, certainly not in the 1970s. Wait a sec. Nobody had a mobile in the 1970s.  I looked at it quizzically. Not much larger than a packet of 20 Senior Service. Suddenly, it trilled like a blackberry bird.  I had no idea what to do with it. I only remember this now as I’ve suddenly rediscovered my memo book again at the bottom of a drawer. It is now 2011 – and I hardly remember why I needed to go to London that day forty odd years ago. Perhaps I’d find a clue inside where I might have noted down some of my journeys for the disinterest of posterity.  I walk into the bright garden and sit in a ready-erected deck-chair. My story. Still a Mystery. It is couched in my handwriting of today, matured slightly from what it had been when I was younger.  Except there are some unattributable block capitals. Suddenly I heard a dying trill and felt a juddering and the sun flickered. THE END