{funambulism}

I’ve just been to a different place. There’s a perfume that old greek women wear, and it was sunny today; these two transported me. I was sat in the pub and I fancied a break, so I wandered down to sit by the river. There was an old greek lady sat there and as I sat on the bench next to her, I caught a whiff of her perfume (I guess it smells like Madeleines, though I’ve never smelt them.) It instantly took me back to being a child on the beach; the shingly gravel beneath my feet became sand, the river became the briny sea, the sun was the same sun, and the old lady became my Aunty Nina (not a real aunty, but then they never are), enfolding me in her hot fat arms. I never saw her in that situation as a child, by the seaside, but I sat there transfixed for fifteen minutes, and came out of it like a yogic trance.