Windfall

"When I was sick and lay in bed, I had six pillows at my head".

"In Xanadu did Khubla Kahn a stately Pleasure Dome decree, Where Alph the Sacred River Ran..".

These were lines of verse that my dad used to recite to me when I was little, and they stay in my head always, every time I turn a pillow I think it, every time the children are sick, I think it. It's nice to have those memories. Keeps my dad alive.

Tonight, when I was sitting in the cool evening sun, I was looking at the windfall, and I remembered my dad telling me about the time him and his mate were picking apples off someone's house - way out in the "posh" part of town.

The local bobby had come along and caught them, gave each of them a skelp, and then told them that he would be along to speak to their parents at 6 that evening to inform them of the punishment. He told them to run off home and tell them to expect him.

Times as they were, Dad ran home, told him mum who skelped him, who told his dad, who also skelped him. And then he waited for the policeman, who never turned up! But he never stole anyone's apples again!

Don't you think it would be a better society today, if police were still allowed to dole out the odd skelp to a delinquint child without the risk of being charged with assault?