When you're of the age where the world is your oyster and no matter how many wheelie bins you decide to play gladiators on get burnt to the ground in the alley way, there is still prosperity to be had.
Paint the street red, because you're just not old enough for the town yet. And when your mother comes screaming for her mop stick back, after you have just given the boy from next door a nice shiner with it, then on top of the world you are and the town better be aware and wait anxiously.
The boy down the street robs your piggy bank, actually sneaks into your house, up to your room and makes you rally four blocks after him before you give in and declare defeat (he was three years older by the way, we used to bathe together when the gas went) and go crying to your drunk dad who has been in the betting shop all day. He will come good for you? He will, he is your dad. He has to, it's his job.
It's then me mum that drags him round the corner by the ear. The boy, not me dad. She'll have more in store for him.
And the boy, he's still bloody smirking. I'll wipe it off him in my own way (And I did).
God, that time I found the tenner and my aunt got wind (word) from the little snitch four doors up, so I legged it to my room and hid it under a mound of teddy bears, in a bag, then in a purse. Secure.
I found it! It was mine, that magpie could get out of town if she thought she would get a look in on my new found fortune. She was always a sly one.
One ice cream bribe later from her, me mum and a full leccy meter we all gained, even the emergency was debited.
It's funny now how I sit here with forty pence on the electric and I'm not worried. I'm smiling nostalgia because it reminds me of more pressing times that moulded me and made me too resourceful than I probably need to be.
The world is half an oyster, maybe a quarter now. And the town I left was so red that the paint is still underneath my fingernails. Flakes fall out retracing and I act out that sense of recklessness, but I'm not quite sure why, because...
Wheelie bins wont hold this weight any more. Prosperity becomes slim line. And all the red paint in the world and even light blue would not paint this town pretty now. The gladiator in me was fed to a lion, but was not eaten whole, my heart still beats. So I wont wait it out. I'll wade it out.
And you are now expecting the resolution, a linchpin that will draw and bind it all together into resolve?
Me too.
