Clockwork Motorboats

When I was a kid, my school reports often referred to me as a dreamer, meaning I spent an inordinate amount of my time not learning, but looking out of the window. I’m not sure what I might have been daydreaming about, but thinking back, it was probably, certainly in the summer months, the prospect of a holiday on the south coast of England and all it might entail: trips to what was then called Perdido’s (it’s now the Lobster Pot, a beachfront cafe); swimming in the sea; playing with a toy yacht (Star Yachts of Birkenhead, proper sailing boats); and building sandcastles on the beach and trying to hold back the tide. As a young kid I also used to fantasise about owning enough land to run a small railway, one of those small-scale locomotives found in amusement parks, and this later morphed into owning my very own ghost train that all visitors would have to use to reach me inside. This particular fantasy involved me waiting for my guests in the living room and them arriving through two wo...

Finally, I reach my destination. There has been rain after the stifling heat of yesterday, but it’s not cold. The sliding doors of the train open and I find myself bang opposite the exit and the steel-capped steps that lead down to the tunnel under the tracks. A smell of rain lingers in the air. I turn left and head towards the road. “What’s your fantasy today?” “I’ve used them all up.”  “Wrack your brains.” “I am, but I can’t think of any.” The truth is I can’t be bothered. All of my day dreams have exploded into nothing, there’s little much left and besides, I don’t want to degenerate into fretfulness, which is always the end result. I cross the road and walk past parked cars and plastic dustbins in untidy driveways, numbers scrawled roughly on their sides. “I’ll play a game instead.” Most licence plates these days close with three letters, like SKN or TGP or NSK and I try and make up words. So SKN could be ‘stupendous kayak ninjas’ and TGP might be ‘the gormless porpoise’ and NS...