Day 288. We'll need a bigger boat (15/10/13)

It was as I was pouring the milk for J's tea this morning, a bottle of milk that was dated best before the day before my 50th birthday, that a memory hit me.

We were standing in the queue for dinner, in the dinner hall in Fazakerley Comprehensive (dinners were passable but they did this fantastic dessert, a tub of ice cream with a chocolate shell) and talking.

I can't remember who was there; me and a couple of others but I can't see their faces. We'd been talking about Jaws and who had seen it and who hadn't so what does that make it? 76? 77? and then moved on to the impending ice age that we had been convinced was due within the next six months at most.

From there we passed to the prospect of the year 2000, that long ahead science fiction future where we would all have jet packs and flying cars and holiday regularly on the moon.

And we discussed how old we would be in this far off time. I would be 37 years old. It was a ridiculous, incomprehensible age. There was no way that I could envisage the idea of being that old, of having lived that long a life; now I can barely remember what 37 felt like although it seems to be about ten minutes ago.

I was our Matty's age but I was quite clearly already me. Can anybody tell me how that works?

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