It was a warm day yesterday and after work as we do usually we adjourned for a few cooling ales. I left a little after 6 to catch up with a girl on the other side of the city. We had a spicy Thai meal together and then went back to her apartment for a bottle of wine.
It was still light when I came out. The heat came from the ground and the sunlight seemed infused with an extraordinary glow. It was as if the light came from all around, reflecting a golden glow. I walked amongst it with my eyes wide taking it all in. In the street tourists waddled by in their shorts and attractive Asian girls in cotton dresses that hitched up with every step. I turned the corner wondering at all this until I caught up with a friend at a rooftop bar for another drink or two. I made mention of none of this beyond the prosaically obvious what a lovely evening.
Later, when it was dark and I was in a taxi on the way home I thought about the light earlier. It delighted me somehow, as if it was peerfect, as if that is how it is meant to be. I looked out the window at the passing scenery, shops with sale signs in the window, people waiting for trams. I realised that what I had been witness to earlier was like the perfect summer of our memories, where everything is bathed in the golden glow of nostalgia.
We paint those colurs in in retrospect normally - yesterday I was lucky enough to have it for real.
