They sat together on the bench outside the supermarket, although it had long since ceased to be a supermarket.  The odd customer still came and went, however, and often passed the time of day with George and Albert, interrupting their snoozes and mutual wheezes, their impossibles, improbables and undeniables...

But this is not about George and Albert. Their story is too old to be told.

We need to pan round towards a completely different town, across the wide furrowed field, where can be just discerned the spire of a church upon the horizon: a Proustian scene that many of us have now forgotten. So to remind us all, those days were a single never-ending summer. 

We zoom in towards the spire, gradually picking out the Victorian buildings of a  town where times were Nineteen-Fifties.

Another pair of old gents sat outside a shop that had real counters covered in curtain- or dress-material .... and cash-canisters speeding along a cat’s cradle of wires to help pay the staff their wages.  One member of staff even at this moment was wearing a tape measure like a token scarf as he came out into the sunshine to pass the time of day with the two old gents.

We need to float towards the other end of the street, as our goal is not to check out the two old gents but to find a woman by the name of Audrey Wisdom, mother of Norman, to interview her for Pathé News.  However, we keep feeling drawn back to the bench where sat the two old gents, as if a bigger story had to be told than the one we originally sought.

We should have realised.  Based, admittedly, just on the evidence of two towns at least, there was always a bench where sat two old gents – seemingly forever – and not just in any single town. But in every town.  We need to discover if this was true and, if true, whether there was some pre-modern contact across the intervening fields ... contact between each pair of old gents by means of some miniature communication device hidden in their pockets when out of use.

But we soon forget this tangent and re-focus towards the other end of town where Audrey Wisdom waited to talk to us about a quite different matter.

George stared at Albert, to see if he, too, had spotted our passing.

Albert was fast asleep.  But each time George moved, Albert moved similarly, as if he were George’s puppet.  No strings to be seen, so anyone would have thought it was magic. Standing nearby, the man with the tape measure around his neck mimed mopping his brow to give some indication of the day’s heat.

Inside Albert’s head it felt as if things were pulling at the brain. Tweaks and tugs.  One tug made me wake up and open my eyes.  The church opposite was a comforting customary sight, its spire providing welcome shade from the sun even momentarily when at its highest. 

But what was up with George, my long erstwhile crony and chronicler?  Being measured for his last suit, by the look of it.

A group of figures stood silhouetted by the shimmer of distance at the other end of the street.  Just one sun-glint of reflection, then nothing ... except for remembrance of things past when the future eventually came round.

The churches are ring-toning across the fields.