Spitting out Ice-cream

Playing a movie in reverse. Starting at The End. Finis. Not something you see happen too often in the digital age, but I remember the film reels of childhood, when, after too many seasonal drinks and the locked-in fever of an English winter, relatives would show us old home movies, and then, just for fun, play them backwards. We’d collapse with laughter as a seaside holiday turned into a keystone cops undoing of life- fish would hurl themselves backwards off fishing rods back into the safety of the ocean, and ice-creams would be spewed out of tiny messy mouths, even as the faces miraculously cleaned themselves up.

And so it goes. After fifteen years of marriage, I am divorced. The memories and life created have all been rewound, right back to slipping rings off fingers and reversing up the aisle.

Yet this ending is not the time to leave your cinema seat. No, you should grab some snacks and settle down, for this is the beginning of a new epic. Even in pre-production, this next show is hailed to be a prize-winner, an award-winning cast is set to revolutionise the way we view things. From the reverse movie you just chuckled through, I have three children, whose lives are most definitely progressing. I’m thrilled to be part of that. I also have a new partner, and her role in the movie seems to be one that will have equal billing on the credits. Very happy about that.

So I’m settling back, wondering how the scenes will play out, and how the story will end. I’m not reversing this time. I’m hurtling into the future with the expectancy that things will work out, that in this movie, anything could happen.

Grab your popcorn and your cherry slushies. You won’t be bored. Promise.