Rewind.

We are on stony high-grounds. Looking down. Abdul and I. My shorts pockets bulging with a mixture of boiled sweets stuck in their sticky juices, a few pebbles and chewing gum wraps. Abdul had a weapon. A home-made catapult just in case. We were seven and smart!

We are checking out the limestone hill towering above the quarry like Columbus looking at America. We know we want to climb it but for the problem of our littleness. We squint our eyes and look eagerly eastwards now lit with the setting Sunlight. There is a flurry of birds returning home. I crunch on my sweets as Abdul pokes into a sticky dark fluid that seeps through the bark of the giant Mahogany trees. He carefully dodges the ants that gather around the wound.

The limestone hill, a few hundred yards away, muses.

Abdul looks at me with the catapult in one hand and crawling ants on the twig on the other and grins at me. We come away with that hill to haunt me in my dreams for summers to come.

Fast Forward.

Sid is driving. I catch the Sunlight on the back of his neck as we seize moments of conversation. Never quite burdened by his huge heart, he is forever busy, doing chores, helping out. Hard to catch. Sid. I have started calling him the Scarlett Pimpernel. Sid always wears his trademark waistcoat. Even though happily married, that waistcoat remains his ultimate Prima Donna. He wears black framed glasses that accentuates the academic air about him. He thinks furiously and his lips are forever desperately chasing his mind. I am so intrigued by this process every time he speaks, I often miss the contents.

Sid smiles as we drive through frozen streets and obstinate icicles hanging on the front porches of quaint houses.

Abdul. Sid. And I. One limestone hill and obstinate icicles.