A Bristol Novella

It was during one of those transitional periods, between the seasons, those late summer months, with the weakened sun still warm enough to lounge. It was around that time, between seasons, that I found myself around my home town.  

During my earlier years, at eighteen perhaps, these months, August, September, were always held as golden months. It was customary in our small town to lie on the beaches drinking in the last of the summer waiting for the end of era beach parties. One, or two, of these parties had been affectionately named The Last Supper and were, by and large, massively over organised and anticlimactic. Still it was the atmosphere that we all came for not the company.

A fire was often lit in the far corner of the bay where the sea had calved a semi-open grotto from the soft clay rock. Glowing embers would fly into faces and ash would spatter clothes and sun glasses, as the gentle sea winds would take the flailing flames up into the empty dust of the summer nights. The drum of conversation always present to compliment the American pop-punk, and full of passion and prospect, the great unknown,  laugher, life adventures, tales of travels yet to be arranged. The heat would lift the smell of smoke and hops through the air as if fuelling our dreams and what they would come.  

There were often dreams mentioned, or stories told, that I was eager to follow and indeed the protagonists.  But since living them and with the passing of time it was clear that these dreams where just that, and that gathering like those we had could not exist in the present.