the watcher at Castle Hill

A memory rises out of the ocean floor of Self. Up bubbles a boy at his Granny’s.

He is solitary: at play in his own head. Weekends he was there, and there were few – but not many – children his own age for him to play with.
So he played alone. Alone in the vast sloping garden of Castle Hill, hedged in straight lines. He would be Scotland’s last gasp winning goal scorer at the World Cup final. He would be the commentators’ acclaim, the crowd going wild, the teammates the friends ecstatic in what he’d done. He had won everyone he knew, everyone he didn’t know, this wonderful celebration of their greatness; everyone he loved, everyone he wanted love from shined this radiant light of warm regard upon him.

 
The boy has ventured out of Castle Hill and down among the treetops. He loves to climb and sit among the branches. He feels safely anonymous and unknown above the heads of passers-by, for people never look up.
He is in a tree overlooking the back garden of a friend he sometimes plays with. The friend is there with three others. They are messing about, laughing and rough tumbling. He can just hear their voices but not what they say. He simply watches from the trees.
Five minutes, maybe twenty pass and he watches firmly enthroned by the branches. He looks and looks: the boys below are with each other effortlessly. Easy laughter comes, crisps and sweets passed between them.
Yet he remains there, he doesn’t go down to them. He feels stuck for a first approach, locked in the firm hold of the tree’s branches. So he stays solitary, the light beginning to gather on the horizon.
He is high in a tree on Castle Hill. He can see for miles, he can see the intimacy of friendship at play close-by. He does not know how to make his way down from looking to touch, to interplay among the boyhoods below. So he remains. This watcher on Castle Hill. He can see the sun sink.

The memory darkens.

The bubble pops and is gone.