Imagine That: Other lives

I am older now, but sometimes I look back and wonder...

It was one of those wild days. It was the sort of "in-your-face" days that sort of dares you to do something. The sky was blasted with clouds that looked like the wrecks of battleships, and the sun blazed through the holes. There was a wind blowing, warm and cold at different times, full of pollen. It smelled of willows, and pine trees, and dust from the hills. Below me, like a model display, the city spread across the land in a shimmering haze.

Lew and I were just boys, but we were climbing the hills. Rambling. It was the nearest thing to high adventure we had at that age. Freedom seemed so natural to us. Time seemed to stretch endlessly ahead and behind, we were loaded with energy after a big lunch, and we were young, which meant we didn't know about tiredness, or the world. Not real tiredness anyway, like some older people talked about sometimes. We could have walked all day, and run home flat out from any distance.

We came to a slope with many rocky outcrops. Lew lifted several rocks and let them roll away, down the hill. They tumbled awkwardly, flopping against the broom bushes or crashing into thick clumps of gorse. They never got very far. But it was fun to watch them, lumbering slowly, gaining speed, and dying.

We went on.

"There's a good one!"

"Where?"

Lew pointed.

It was a perfect rock. Squarish and solid. No cracks running through it. Lew lay on his back and got his feet against the side. It moved slightly.

"Come on!" he said, straining.

I hesitated. Far below, in the blueness of the valley, farther down than the masses of hillside with its scrub and thick broom, was a glasshouse. It was a long building, like a snake of white, glinting and sparkling in the raging sunlight.

"What if it gets through the broom and hits the glasshouse?"

"It won't!" said Lew.

"It might though!"

"Come off it! There's too much stuff down there. It