Gerry Jacobson

Time Stands Still

Grey London in post-war austerity. Everyone is poor. My aunt and uncle are not quite so poor. They holiday in Switzerland, and bring back a Swiss Watch for their favourite nephew. I am nine or ten years old, and I don’t realise that not everyone has a watch.

There’s a high wall surrounding a building at the top of our street. The game we urchins play is to see who can hang there, by fingertips, the longest. We use the watch to time each other.

“C” is timing me as I hang on the wall. He walks to a grid over the gutter drain, holds the watch there, and drops it. I react rather dully, accepting his story that it is an accident.

forty years on—
a school reunion
declined

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About the Author

Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia, and can be found writing tanka in its cafes. He was a geologist in a past life and now celebrates reincarnation as a dancer.