Dreaming when dawn's left hand was in the sky...

ALONE in this four-bedroom house, I reflect on Veronica's absence. More precisely, evidence of her passage through this comfortable if echo-y building. Pottery decorating the Welsh dresser. Pans on racks under the stairs. Sage-green carpet which she chose to comfort our bare toes as we crossed the bedroom en route to the en suite. Multitudinous books overloading shelving in four rooms. Her aforementioned painting exercises, now framed and hung. An enormous embroidery of a cockerel presiding over the stair-well. Cans and cans of flageolets deliberately bought en masse given that the comparatively distant Waitrose is the only source in Hereford. An expensive Neff oven with separate glass hob. Plus the equally expensive tiled floor in the kitchen. 

Veronica was an atheist as I am, both of us untroubled by any consideration of heaven or hell. Believing that we live on - metaphorically and briefly – though our influence on those we have known and who have outlived us. Not necessarily to anyone’s benefit.

Loneliness allows me space and time to envisage my own forthcoming death. My 91st just passed, so, fair to say, I’m on borrowed time. Six months? Any more would qualify as unsubstantiated optimism. But who, then, have I influenced? My family. Neophyte journalists working on magazines I have edited. Will my memory stretch beyond next year's Tour de France. 

But should I even be considering post-mortem matters? That's surely a job for others. So what may I usefully dwell on? The quietness of the house helps. How about an unexpected revelation? 

The most remarkable visitation was an offshoot of eight months training on electronics with the RAF. Finding out how information may travel long wire-less distances was fun but there was more to it than that. To understand those processes phenomena need to be expressed mathematically. I’m not claiming I became a real mathematician but - for the first time in my life - I gained an inkling as to how the rules of nature can be laid out concisely and manipulated as symbols rather than messing about laboriously with nature itself. 

A magic moment. If only I could contrive to transfer it to someone vulnerable to magic moments. A genuine life-changer