The Colour of Imagined Electricity

An afternoon on the beach; Sunday sun, calm sea the colour of electricity (the imagined colour of electricity anyway) and the oddly melancholy smell of barbecues. Up above, there;s some kind of light aircraft - a stunt plane - whorls and loops and stomach-tightening dives, and we're all impressed, but I can't help imagining that plane crashing into that still sea.
Andy and myself are photographed posing inside a tank. 'Don't touch anything!' the soldier-lady warns, as if a 41 and 36 year old man are going to start messing about with buttons. However, considering that being photographed posing by a tank is normally the province of 9 year old boys, perhaps we were well warned. Nobody knows what the tank is doing in a side street off Western Road, and we do not ask. Perhaps there will be a secret military coup.
I manage to only have three pints in the Evening Star. I am too aware of work the next day, and of how it doesn't feel like Sunday (It's not Sunday - it's Bank Holiday Monday). After Claire's brother and his girlfriend leave, and Al and Claire go home, I leave Andy in the pub and wend my way home, listening to Burzum's album of re-recorded early songs From the Depths of Darkness on my i-pod.
I sleep well, and am having a stretched out morning - this is my week of lates. When I stepped into the kitchen this morning, the air there felt like those few too-short days when Corin was visiting in Worcester, the summer of 1998 - mid July to be precise. Unreal, bright air, taste of sun - and something cool laced there which might mean that summer (or that summer anyway) might deepen and last forever.
It didn't, of course. I grew old and became middle-aged instead,