3.10: Afterwards

Froggie awakes the next morning, Christmas morning, in his normal armchair in the bar surrounded by the Barman and the sounds of the other customers: his friends! They returned in a late night taxi from their lengthy Caribbean holiday to find him passed out in a pile of shoes and assumed, falsely of course, that he had been celebrating the arrival of Christmas with too much enthusiasm.

There is the ‘glup-glup’ noise of the Barman’s old fashioned coffee percolator, bubbling away on the stove (providing a lovely smell while also ruining the taste of the coffee) and, perhaps, the gentle sound of suitcase unpacking activity around and upstairs. 

The day is not actually any lighter than it has been on some of the brighter previous autumnal days. After all, it is only a little after the shortest day. But Froggie’s world is quite different from how it has been. It seems to him, before he greets the others, and before he gives any thought to the task he set himself if he survived the autumn - there is time for that later - that he has been misled by his feelings for several weeks now. This, after all, is where the autumn leads and, from this day, albeit very slowly but inevitably, onwards into spring and light. This, really, was all he had to fear, and this, like his realisation about Death, is really nothing at all. Zip. 

Is there any chance he can remember this next October?

[The end]