MOVING ON

Experience has taught me that age and wisdom don’t always walk hand in hand down Stokes Croft.
Standing at the top of the stone steps that led down to a rain wet cobbled market square, I heard what sounded like angels singing. When I got to the square I saw the singing wasn't angels but a choir sitting outside a derelict pub partly obscured by a low mist. A little further on in the shadow of a Chinese takeaway she was waiting for me. I waved and walked over to her.
‘I can do it,’ I said when she asked about the offer'd been made me. 'It'll just take some effort and organisation, is all.'
I'd answered the phone when it rang late last night.
‘You available?’ a man's voice said.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll be in touch when it's time,’ he’d said.
‘Is that all?’ she said. ‘Didn’t he say anything else?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘that was all he said.’
I woke thinking about what I’d achieved and if I might achieve more and what it might be...
‘Don’t you know what it means?’ he said from across the table in the new Café Kino’s as I flicked through a small children's book had Danish words above pen and ink illustrations on each page.
‘I can understand everything just by looking at the pictures,’ I said.
To one side of me on the right of the table was a rack of back issues of a magazine I’d written and published a few years ago.
A young woman put a cup of black coffee in front of me before taking the rack of magazines away.
‘Where are you taking them?’ I said.
‘To where they belong,’ she said, ‘with those memories of yours we keep out back.’
‘Oh,’ I said..
‘Oh, indeed,’ she said. ‘It really is time you moved on.’