Yesterday evening I found myself walking down a hill in a suburb of South London - a slightly Dickensian scene, and certainly not the sort of place where you'd expect to have many feelings other than a certain suspicion that you might be mugged. I was carrying with me a bag full of letters that I'd stupidly agreed to deliver; this was to-all-intents-and-purposes a pretty pointless exercise that I'd been lumbered with, and yet, in these miserable surroundings, I had a sudden realisation that I was really happy. There was probably some sort of electrochemical alignment that occurred to produce this feeling of elation, and I'm pretty sure the dual-keyboard song by The Gloria Record that I was listening to had something to do with it, but it was one of those fleeting moments I think I'll always remember. Looking up into the air, I saw the flashing lights of one plane, high up, and then I spotted another, much closer, close enough that I could see its undercarriage lit up with an orange glow against the velvety midnight blue of the sky. In that moment I felt like I suddenly understood the vastness of the world, but my insignificance was mixed with a kind of contentment. It was that rarest thing: recognition of being happy, and being in love, when you are, not after the fact.
There is to be no mention of kite marks here
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