Some Salmon and a New dawn.

Jack – an elderly fellow- couldn’t remember if he had already had a nap that day, so he climbed up to the bed and fell asleep for the second time.

Because of the first and the late hour of the second, he slept deeper than before. 

And longer. 

His body tricked into believing it was night–time.

He awoke in the small hours, surprisingly alert.

He got up and stumbled into the kitchen.

It was dark and he couldn’t remember where the light switch was.

It was cold.

He didn’t know this but the outside temperature had fallen to minus-nine.

He had a sudden, inexplicable desire to enact a scene from an old W.C. Fields film he had laughed at as a child, and moved across the room to the front door.

He threw it open, stepped outside and hollered – “It’s not a fit night out for man or beast.”

In the old black-and-white film, someone off-camera threw a handful of snow into the comedians face.

In the new full-coloured world Jack was hit instead by the icy-cold air.

He was not wearing a hat.

But he was sensible enough to go back in, close the door and fumble for the kettle – his most compelling source of instant heat.

The below-zero chill had so numbed his mind that he was unable to ascertain whether he had had a nap that day so before the kettle could boil he returned to his bed and slept.  

He dreamt he was awake, walking along a beach in mid-summer.

He was wearing no shoes or socks and in his dream he could feel the soft sand embrace his toes like an old friend.

He stopped and turned to the waves that seemed to be waving. 

He waved back.

A gull, suddenly swooping low, called out and Jack called back.

“Be gone.”

It was a thing to shout at a gull.

Stranger to shout it in the crowded supermarket where the dream now placed him.

So he kept quiet and considered instead the slabs of pre-packaged salmon on a shelf before him.

Should he buy some?

Did he like Salmon?

Or Some-on as he now thought?

His giggles woke him.

It was a new dawn.