I used to sit and think a lot – now, in here, I mostly just sit. But when I DO think…

My body bears the imprint of the years
My cells remember
It’s all there -not just in the brain but
In the body
My blood hears voices from the playground
My heart thumps to a jazz beat
My veins resonate to harmonics
Set in motion long ago
Fear, Joy, Laughter, Ecstasy, Sadness
The creak of the marital mattress
The lying awake before dawn
The wondering why
The thrill as the motorbike cants and swings through the bend
The grinding of the dentist’s drill
The morning after taste of stale beer
The first time holding our newborn baby –
(You hold her like an unexploded bomb, they said)
The stomach lurch as the telephone rings
The thud-thud of the aeroplane’s wheels as we touch down
The taste of cigarettes and toothpaste on a kiss

The body is not just a vehicle for the brain, for the mind. It is YOU – at least while you are on this material plane of existence. So don’t despise Shakespeare’s ‘mortal coils’ after all, none of us are in a hurry to ‘shuffle them off’.

She switches on the small bedside lamp. Very tasteful, Amanda’s room. Not her consulting room, no, the one she uses when she does her stint of overnight duty in the hospital. I can’t help wondering how many other patients have been in here. I am going to tell myself that I am the first!
Nice pastel colours. Would you call that ‘rose pink’? I’m not much good on colours.
Not much in the way of furniture: an easy chair; chest of drawers; small wardrobe; bedside table (holding a carafe of water and a glass, and a telephone with an orange light on the top) and the bed - a single bed of course; well, perhaps it is what they call ‘three-quarter’. Enough room if you are careful!
Oh, and as she closes the door, I see there is a full-length mirror screwed to the back of it. I look up at the ceiling: just plain red emulsion. RED! A RED CEILING?

My mind goes back to that weekend in London with Georgina. We had not been married long and we stayed at this hotel – I forget what it was called, it was in Kensington Gardens – but the room was all done in red: red flock wallpaper. It reminded me of a brothel – not that I have ever been in one. But what a weekend that was. I caught a cold.