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As a small child I often wondered what happened when your life ended, so, I asked my dad...
�Well son,� he said, �you are either cremated, which means you go up in a puff of smoke, or you are buried, which means you don�t.� He smiled at me, pleased to have satisfied my curiosity. I could imagine the conversation my cricket-mad father was having with himself in his head. At this exact moment he could probably hear Richie Benaud's voice saying, �And dad has batted that tricky question away to the boundary for four runs.� He would give a nod of acknowledgement to the crowd for their generous applause. But I wasn�t satisfied, this wasn�t quite what I was after, �I know all that, but what happens next? Where do you go?� He looked puzzled and slightly lost; I had obviously bowled him a bouncer. �Ah well, let�s see now,� he said, �you ...er, well I think that you er... it�s...yes... you... hmmm.� I�d stumped him. He resorted to the standard reply taught at Parenting School. �Ask your mother,� he said, before making an excuse to escape, �I must go and sort out my vests.� Mum didn�t really know either, even though she was always telling me that �Mothers know everything!� I came across death first-hand when my sister�s hamster died. �Nipper� (She called him Nipper because that was his name) had been missing for 3 days after my sister had decided to give his cage its annual clean. |
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She had taken Nipper and the cage into the bathroom, presuming that this would be a secure area with few hazards. She should have placed him in the bath of course, where he would never have escaped. I'm sure he would have enjoyed slipping around on its enamel surface with his little feet; perhaps he might even have practiced a few hamsters-on-ice type moves. But no, she put him on the floor where he promptly made a break for freedom by disappearing behind the bath and refusing to come out, even for his favourite food, which according to my sister was Weetabix covered in Angel Delight (by some bizarre coincidence this happened to be her favourite as well).
Three days later father found Nipper, even though he wasn�t looking for him. Dad had gone into the garage to fill a watering can so that he could refresh the weeds in our garden. After filling it to the brim he took it outside, but then wondered why it wouldn�t pour. Looking inside he found the reason � Nipper was floating on his back with his little feet in the air, blocking the spout. To put it mildly, he wasn�t doing the backstroke, and wouldn�t ever be doing anything again. My dad refused to give him the kiss of life, for fear of blowing him up to the size of a beach ball. My sister was heartbroken. First David Cassidy had left The Partridge Family and now this. It wasn�t a big funeral. Just an old shoebox buried under the silver birch tree in the garden, with two wooden lolly-sticks stapled together in the shape of a cross, the word �Nipper� scrawled along them in shaky felt-tip pen. It still made me wonder where he went though. Was that it? Was he now going to rot down and help the flowers grow or had he gone to heaven? And what was heaven anyway? |
| Soul Trader |
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| Below is a sample taken from Nicks new book 'Soul Trader' If you would like to receive an email when Nicks book is published please drop us an email and we will keep you updated. Click Here |
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