Happy birthday Paul Squires.
I see you. Don’t think you’re beyond seeing, old man, high up there in the larch, swinging your legs and whistling and throwing larch cones at the pretty girls who walk underneath, grinning like a cheshire cat.
I see you.
I hear you, Squires, laughing softly as you stir up a storm in a virtual teacup, as endless and looping as those very concentric circles that you went on and on about, looping and endless. All for fun yet so serious.
Your time machine stands in the corner. Someone has filled it with boxes left over from a jumble sale and wrapped it in christmas lights. We’ll sort through it one day when it’s rainy and we’re bored.
I know you know we loved you, pain in the arse that you could be, linking arms tonight and drunkenly swaying to a strange sort of Auld Lang Syne of Happy slurring purriness, bouncing about in black and orange stripes and doing a crap rendition of the hokey-kokey.
I smell you, uncle, sea salt and cigarettes swirling quietly around the bookcases while I type, mingling with every word~ urging me on.
That piano, the one with the famous musicians, the one where we all took a turn and sang and danced and that duck, that poor, strangely placed duck. I’m laughing now, properly laughing.
Yeah,
all those things.
Cheers.
Lovely. Comforting. (((((((((((you)))))))))))
Smiles for (((you))).
Paul would have liked this, I’m sure. No doubt he’s sneeking around sites reading the people he kept up with. Your talent is on the top of his “to watch” list. Paul made a lot of difference in my life. I won’t forget him or the rest of the people he gathered together. I took the cowardly way out and stayed in my own corner by myself to remember Paul on the 19th. I still don’t half believe it’s true he’s not just off on another project and I couldn’t stand the idea of celebrating with the people I loved and lost, including you and Paul. I’m in hiding in general these days. Kudos, Ms Bee Skiffle. This lives up to your usual high quality of well chosen words, with sights and sounds that please the senses. – Mimi. xxxx