Did Micky die at this time of the year?

The car drives down the beach road, through the estates of fast food joints and fun fairs where worshippers are using the concrete walls to trap the sun’s rays onto their bodies still wet from the surf; they lie in distorted tangles.

In the back seat a baby starts to cry but stops when he sees me, seeing him. He can hardly speak; he has no sentences as such but many individual words and a surprisingly mature understanding of conversation

He asks where we are going.

“The sea”, I reply and he repeats it with a smile.

“The sand,” I add and this meets with his approval.

“Maybe swim, I explain – he likes this idea.

“But first we are going to a shop, to get something special to eat”. I slip this in last because I’m not sure he will be so impressed, but it turns out it does.

“Fizzy?” he asks.

“Do you like fizzy?”

He tells me he does and the sudden brightness in his eyes tells me that this is good news, so he might like the next.

“The guy who runs the shop, a Spaniard, is the guy who created Mickey Mouse.” It’s my trump card and the reason that I am going to his shop.

“Mickey Mouse?” He doesn’t know who Mickey Mouse is, so I start searching in the car for anything with his image. How can a baby who likes fizzy not know Mickey?

All this is between 5 and 9.

Between 11 and 4 there was nothing, then I woke and peed then listened to the frogs in the valley below the house. The night was clear, the starts immense and the frogs were going crazy.

The nightingale was silenced.

Between 4 and 5 I lay unable to sleep, fighting the invasion of questions that don’t help but return each night at this time, and during the day too. They have no answers.

So between 5 and 9 is a good time to visit.