Twinkling Particles

Reading time: Share this post.

A nice thing about being a child in the early seventies was the absence of screens. No mobile phones, streaming TV, social media or other internet distractions. Looking back, life seemed simpler back then.

My brother and I sit on a shiny 1970s mock-leather sofa. A black-and-white television with clunky push buttons sits in a corner of the room. Daytime TV is still a thing of the future, so the heavy piece of electrical furniture is inactive, redundant.

From the kitchen come the clunks and rattles of food preparation. Tinny sounds of music, played from a classic Roberts R500 transistor radio can also be heard.

Until lunch, we're left to our own devices.

A low winter sun shines through the room's off-white net curtains. A few dust motes drift through the shafts of sunlight, almost as if they were sentient. We're thrilled by the extra dust we can create by beating the sofa cushions. The more we crash the cushions together, the larger the shimmering cloud becomes.

Our ambition is unspoken but somehow understood: we want to fill the room with dancing lights. After a short time, and to our delight, we have reached our goal.

Our commotion and cries of joy have alerted our grandmother, who now enters the room. She surveys the scene, not with the delight we had expected, but with a look of horror.

Within a few minutes, we find ourselves sitting in a quiet, somewhat chilly room. The living space is once again orderly, windows flung wide open, cushions back in place.

Our grandmother stands before us. She appears amused rather than angry, a duster and a can of furniture polish clutched in her hand.