They don't make them like this any more

Anonymous

Summer 1947- and blistering, beautiful sunshine burning deep into the soul, breaking up the ice crystals of the wicked winter just gone. You can feel its heat inside you, melting the memory of grimy heaps of snow, of cold that closed its jaws on you and never let go. Here, at my cousins' house, its full summer, and a kaleidoscope of colour - roses, comfiowers, aquilegias, californian poppies (escholtzias my mother told me) - and a cherry tree rustling with faded pink blossom. Bright brown hens squabble over yellow corn, and a golden canary sings in the kitchen where Aunt Ella potters happily in her pretty flowered dress. And in the middle of it all you can see me. That's me swinging upside down from the railings outside the kitchen door, the metal hot (hot!) against the back of my knees. Hanging that way up I can see the fig tree on its rosy wall and the golden leaves on the weeping ash, and behind that a perfect arch of blue sky. Still too small to make sense of it all, and too stunned - catapulted from the internment camp in China and hurtled in, just this minute it seems, from Gran's dark narrow house in Nottingham where the icicles hung from roof to pavement and the electric fire warmed to raspberry pink only to die again before you could de-ice your fingers.

Watch me! Just a minute upended on the railings and then I dart away to explore my new territory - first balancing along the high garden wall, and then bouncing (fearlessly?) across the plank that bridges the pond. And there, on the other side, is Dick - my cousin, my new hero, lying in wait for me.

'Let's...' he says, with his beguiling three-cornered smile. And I listen. I've already forgiven him for the Chinese burns, for his booby traps of yesterday, and even for walling me up in his den. (Too much listening to Dick Barton, Special Agent grumbles my mother when she rescues me at tea-time. This will end in tears!) All that's in the past now. Fresh day - clean page.

'Let's go trespassing,' says Dick. And we do.

What a long haul up the boundary wall - at least for me.

'Oh, don't moan!' says Dick as the grazes make me squeal. So I bite my tongue and sit beside him on the bare top of the wall, pushing aside the branches of the cherry tree. Below us, the neighbours' conservatory - a wilderness of broken glass and weeds.

'You keep guard.' says Dick, and starts to inch down off the wall. But no. That's the bell for tea - and my mother leaning out of the window calling like crazy because my father's home - not home from the office or home from the shops but home from The War.

'Greased lightning,' says Dick, and we slither down the wall like snakes.

'How am I ever to keep you clean,' says my mother, tugging at my dress and brushing the grit from my knees. 'Look who's here.' And looking up into my father's face - high above the legs that, last time I'd seen him had been like grey- flannel tree-trunks - I wonder what he knows. Does he know about our trespassing, or about the lorry driver who cursed me for running out in front of him? Does he know about the little chick who died because I squeezed it too hard? (No matter - he'll soon be gone again!) But he just takes me on his knee, and we all sit drinking tea and looking out at the garden where the parched poplars shine against a sky the colour of smoke. But I'm not there for a rest. Just a quick meal-break, and Dick and I are off and out -zooming round the lawn like fighter planes, scaling the weeping ash to get seriously lost in its upper branches. But it's no use hiding. 'Bedtime,' calls my mother. 'Double summertime it may be...'

Bedtime! What nonsense! The sky still simmers with light. Heat smothers you like a glove. No one could sleep. Just one spirited wriggle and I'm out of my attic window onto the leads outside. No surprise, really, to see Dick climbing out of his window next to mine.

'Too much going on to sleep,' he says. And he's right. The people in the big house next door are having a party. Long rectangles of light filled with bobbing heads stretch out across the lawn. Tantalizing scraps of conversation drift up to us. Music.

'Let's sneak down and see what they're up to,' says Dick. 'Come on. Easy.' And it is - easier than you'd think. Down the staircase on tiptoe, past the bright doorway where the grown-ups are reading - each in a still island of light, and on over the squeaking gravel until we can dive for cover behind the flower beds. We've done it! Up onto the wall. Ouch! So far so good. My shivers of terror make the cherry tree tremble.

'You keep watch here,' hisses Dick. 'I'm going in.' And he eases down onto the conservatory roof. And that's where it all goes wrong. Just a crack of glass under his knee and the whole world erupts. The noise of dogs barking splits the night apart. Heads turning, shouts of anger, chaos, confusion.. .Nothing for it but to get out fast and pray...

But, no, it's not like that. Rewind! The truth is that we get no further than the turn of the stairs. Just one scared peep through the doorway where the grownups are reading, and we're back upstairs and into our beds like little angels.

So what makes this day so special among all those magical days in the wonderful summer of 1947? Just that it was a day so satisfying and beautiful that it left me allergic to ugliness and boredom. You could say I suppose, that it spoiled me rotten for life.