Nothing special on tonight.
Just eating a TV dinner while watching a crime series set in Brighton. I am in York, it is Good Friday, my wife is watching the TV with me and the show is called Grace.
But we all know that insignificant details can be critical to making connections.
Thirty five years ago we moved from London to York not Brighton even though we both loved Brighton. Now we will never experience living in Brighton. One of a billion things we will never experience or never experience again
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Fifty five years ago I spent the night in a telephone box with two friends both called Steven. The telephone box was somewhere near Brighton because at about 3 am we walked down the centre of a dual carriage way to Brighton beach. On the way we lit our cigarettes from a Ronson variflame lighter Steven had been given by his uncle. It had nearly run out of gas, so we had trouble getting a flame and had to cup the lighter in our hands. We spent the remainder of the night in a shelter on the promenade. In the morning, we were very cold and huddled together waiting for the sun to rise and warm us up.
But we all know that insignificant details can be critical to making connections.
Shortly after my diagnosis I started to collect cigarette lighters.
Maybe I was inspired by this incident, more likely it was the discovery of a broken lighter my grandfather had left in a tobacco tin that i had kept in a bookcase my father made. Now I have fifty old lighters and now I notice that the window ledge in Grace’s office (he is a detective) has a collection of cigarette lighters just like mine.
Why does he have such a collection. He doesn’t smoke (like many TV detectives do). To my knowledge he has never mentioned the collection. Is it his collection? It would be very inconvenient should he or the cleaner wish to dust the windowledge, and may even interfere with opening and closing the window.
But we all know that insignificant details can be critical to making connections.
And
So this Good Friday, this episode, this collection is bound to me by Grace.