Magical realism – Firefly

The divine heat haze of the day will soon ebb into the cool of a summer’s evening notwithstanding the bathroom towel rail still emitting a steady 45 degrees Celsius all the better to dry my new swim wear. Secondly these Sarfolk houses do maintain the damp rather too well and often need a good drying out. Why I have recently seen my favourite old wreck of a farm house being slowly restored to its former glory by the land’s finest conservationists – step one – remove all rubble from the edifice, step two, fling the windows open (those that haven’t been broken) and let the old walls relax into the heat like a wizened play boy on a private island, Mustique not Montenegro, obviously.

The half-light is a natural dusk, the time that the fireflies jump happily to their own haphazard rhythm. This is a time that the word mysterious was made for and the slightly strange happenstances that weave their way through this delocated dimension stray into the perception of even the most rational observer. There is always a perfectly sensible explanation for it all, although never one that I have certainly known to be true. Even if there is, I, however, am most definitely not interested in it.

So liminally so stealthily the night draws in then falls like a dead weight over this expanse of fairy dust so the traces of magic and macabre might even not be noticed – only by the person truly not in  hurry, the meanderer not the marcher. The one who takes time to listen – who doesn’t have it decided what he or she knows and as I write this a bird calls out  – could it be an owl or even a linnet…

The growling cars power through (I live by a road) – they’re surely not meandering much but silently stealthily one car always reappears. It pronounces itself en route to the metropolis its body work jet black – some checkers hint at another life spent on the rally track. Where is this car this evening I wonder? Why does it park in the street? Doesn’t its owner have a garage? Somewhere to keep the faithful jalopy?

Maybe not, maybe it just sits like the other cars, out of fuel, out of tax, a corporate whim that was never justifiable. Or maybe it is waiting for a driver, someone to take it out, to parallel park it with ease and not to curse its engineering, ineffectiveness and spiralling costs.

The car gathers cobwebs like an old stile, but is much less fondly regarded. One night I looked out and there in the road was the car and a young man ran towards it, thrust out his arm and activated the central locking. I was trying not to fall out of the window with my peering so I didn’t see him get into the car and drive it off.

It disappeared again for days, weeks, months. One day a not-so-young  woman drove the car back. She got out with a suitcase and marched purposefully back where the boy had appeared all those nights ago. Is she his mother I wondered? Where is his father I pondered…As it was, I needn’t have worried.

I went to the local coffee shop to get a brew and saw the local newspaper. Boy in a box the headline rather grossly screamed. It was a Sarfolk tale of matricide. He had gone to college but had not paid his tuition fees. She decided that enough was enough. When would he learn responsibilities? So she cut him up and put him in her suitcase.

He drives past five times a night. He will never be able to pay off his student loan no matter how many uber gigs he takes. Mum had twins; a girl comes and drives the car now. It is never on the kerb. The fireflies settle and twinkle on its waxed and polished roof. I keep writing and hoping a good take away service starts around here real soon.