Albert is ok I think. He lives next door in a grand old house, all alone but with lots of things. He’s always visiting us. He sits in my Da’s waiting room even though he doesn’t have a dog or a cat. He sits there for ages and talks to everyone like their friend. My Dad tells him to come back later but Albert only goes when he gets hungry or tired. He talks really loudly and for a really long time. He is always talking “with authority” about strange things like wooden tables and plates. He showed me these great tin solders that were really small and told me that I could have them one day when he’s old. He told me that he would take me to Italy one day too. It’s far away from Daddy so I just want the soldiers but mum says polite girls are more memorable, so I just smile when he starts to tell me things like that. Albert can pull some funny faces, he always has one eye half closed like he’s looking through a keyhole. I think I like Albert but he can smell like my mum’s diner parties after they’re over. It makes your nose wrinkle; I don’t like that at all. The waiting room smells like that too when he’s visits, even after he’s gone. He and Dad smoke cigars together when we visit him but they don’t talk much. Dad is always getting our coats. Albert makes my mum laugh like somebody’s tickling her. Mum likes Albert so he’s ok by me. We call him Uncle Albert, which he likes.
* * * * *
Ah! Such a joy to see myself reborn as a child, albeit with gender perversely switched. This precocious whippet has the looks of her mother and the charm of my own true self, thanks to my formative input since birth. God knows what the father has to offer – apparently he enjoys ironing. All the same, there’s promise for this one or at least I’ve decided to extend my hand to that end. As soon as I saw the fat little thing in the hospital blanket I knew this was my opportunity to start over. She’s at that difficult stage now when she asks questions that don’t add up to a hill of beans but education in the arts and classics should steer her on her way. When she becomes a woman at 16 I’ll take her to Venice where we’ll consider the painterly light, gaze enraptured at Rafael’s alter pieces and quash Bellinis like there’s no tomorrow worth waking for. It will be magnificent. There’s a glass eye maker there who hand paints his work in exquisite detail and has provided for numerous cultural figures - you’d think of them all very differently if his work wasn’t so convincingly rendered. Florence may take a shine to Uncle Albert once he’s restored. She should do. By then, I will have invested years of hard work making her the finest little sophisticate in the northern hemisphere.
(My Dad and Albert suffering each other's company)
