Tuesday 20th August

Another beautiful morning here in London; it reminds me of many years ago, when as a child you always woke up expecting sunshine.  Of course it must have rained during my childhood, but all of my out door memories are of sunshine.

All but the earliest.  It was definitely raining that evening, or at least in my memories of it.  I have relived this memory so many times that I am no longer sure if I am remembering an actual event or a memory of remembering it, or even a scene fixed in my head which I believe must be true, but could have been a recurring childhood dream.  I have asked my parents, who are both there with me in the memory, but they cannot recall it at all.  It was raining and dark, and for some reason I was out with them.  We were walking home and as I must only have been three or four maybe I was in a pushchair.  There was a motorcycle crash, the bike skidded and was laying on its side still vibrating and sending hot steam into the night.  The driver, and maybe a passenger too were holding their black helmeted heads in their hands, and the headlights beam splayed across the road and lit up the memorial gates of the recreation ground.  I can see it so clearly, the names of the fallen caught in the headlights beam.

And why, now drinking my coffee in Pret opposite Green Park bathed in glorious sunshine, should my thoughts turn back to that rainy night.

Playing cowboys and injuns in fields full of corn and sunshine.  Picnics with my children on sunlit beaches.  My second wedding, me in a wide-lapelled brown pin-stripe threepiece suit and Joy in a cream dress bathed in sunshine, last week soaking up the sunshine in Eymet; these are the memories I should be remembering.

So why does this rainy painful night come back so often?  Is it a reminder that the sunshine is only a brief interlude before the dark rainy night returns?  Or is it just me and my melancholy mind?