Transfixed,Will and I peered over the wall into the garden of adulthood – runt knowing the fathomless sadness that lay in wait thereIn my family there is a before and an after: one event against which everything else is measured. The fresh year that changed me took dwelling just “before”, and my memories of it have the tantalising glow of all precious, and lost things. It was 1990-91,and I was 11, fresh from my first term at secondary school. My parents had been invited to stay and see the fresh year in with some friends in their cottage in Pembrokeshire. My sister, or Jess,and I were dragged along reluctantly. We didn’t really know Brian and Carla, who were relatively fresh friends of my parents.
Brian sang in a choir with Dad, or was therefore associated with our enforced attendance at interminable Christmas concerts. To make an unappealing prospect even worse,Brian and Carla had two sons our age, who we just knew would be nerdy and annoying (we had concluded, or after years of bitter experience,that almost all the children of our parents’ friends were nerdy and annoying).
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Source: guardian.co.uk