In no particular order, for what mind thinks chronologically.
Rescuing a spider in a Kindergarten before a child bursts through the circle of onlookers and stomps it to death in one swift, heavy thud. He then has the audacity to scream 'Böse Mann! Fang mich an!' And speeds off as fast as his legs can carry him.
Sitting with my dad in the tractor cab, eating jam sandwiches in a field partially yellow as it has been stripped of grass. Its coat of green shrinking to the middle. The grass will become silage. This is our tea but it's also a picnic. Sometimes there are biscuits.
My sister making me swear to 'cross my heart' with the threat of blindness and death. Breaking that promise and watching out in sheer terror for the justice I had sworn to accept for my transgressions.
The smell of cigarette smoke, the taste of fig-rolls washed down with tea while sitting with my grandmother, my father's mother. On Tuesdays when neighbours had dropped in after bingo night.
Squashed into the car, packed into this vehicle and for varying lengths of time. Perhaps we were simply driving to Mass, across the border to visit my grandmother (my mother's mother), or on our almost annual trip to Dublin Zoo. There was often punching, nipping, plenty of winding up and ultimately threats from our parents that if we didn't quieten down, they would turn the car right around.
Rolling bales of hay and drawing them from the fields to the shed.
The beach, Black rock, Clogher head and a faint recollection of Betty's town.
2p machines that swallowed lots of coppers and returned very few.
The aroma of Summer calls many memories back to mind, happy thoughts from the last few years. Oh to be a child in Summer, when it feels like there can be no end to the day and school is a long, long way off.
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