Life Without Reading

We were always so aware of the passing of time
and of winters as children in the 1980s
Because every Christmas Aled Jones sang The Snowman,
And the grown-ups said ‘ooh when his voice breaks he
won’t be able to sing it any more’,
And somehow we knew from that that
The years, the winters the Christmases
Were a holding out against the breaking
Of childish illusion, that the freezing the sledging
The deep snow the hypnotised memories of childhood
would break like a snowball, shattering the window;
Smash and it’s all gone; Aled Jones stayed in my
ex-boyfriend’s B&B in Wales and apparently he’s
fat now. Those winters.