34

I flick on the television. Another year approaches.

On the screen, a suntanned man in slow motion begins to smile a wide smile. Behind him is blurred out. The background is a hazy dusk colour; a Spanish or South American courtyard? There is an old gentleman dancing with a luminous woman with long black hair. A lifting piano underneath signifies that something is approaching. The handsome, soft-featured man begins to reach down. His smile dissipates as he too waits for something approaching out of shot.

It is his child. They embrace as the camera pans out to show the whole courtyard of dancers. This company does holidays that cater to families, and it does them well. They advertise just after the exhausting bombardment of Christmas adverts and January sale offers....Time we started thinking about our holidays, honey. You get no rest from the advertisers. You get no rest from anywhere. As soon as you’ve booked, then it’s Valentine’s Day, then Easter. The eggs are in the supermarket, and chocolate Jesus gets no sanctuary from the drooling mouths of parents and children alike. The reassuring regularity of existence, over and over again, laps against us. Drugged and drooling in the comfort of my television chair, I sip the dregs of my drink, the air very still and dry next to the anaesthetizing heat of the radiator.

A wife sleeps alone upstairs.