One Spring day a few years ago, I was walking through Botanic Gardens in Belfast with my closest and dearest friend Christopher (a truly remarkable man, and a terrible one).
It was about three o'clock, so all these wee kids were walking back through the park, coming home from school.
One wee girl walked toward us with her ma. Even today, as I ruminate on the tale, I can clearly remember the perfect fragment of their conversation that reached us. In the silence that ebbed between their noise and ours, we both heard her tell her mother "... And I have my own life now".
She was about 5. That's not normal talk for 5 year olds. I was mental when I was 5, obsessed with a red vest that I liked to wear. I remember being often fascinated by how tanned my arms were in the summer. That's the kind of stuff 5 year olds should be on about, not about having their own lives. My vocabulary at the time wouldn't even allow me to express such a sentiment.
So I often think about what she meant, or what she thought she meant. Maybe she did have her own life, now. She could have been a really clever wee child, too advanced for her childish playmates. She probably looked at us, at Christopher and I, and thought we were sad, puerile twats. She'd have been right, as well.
Wee Chub-Chub better not start any of that shite.
I hope she has my accent.
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