Mrs Miniver
Old Tom was in his ninetieth year. He couldn’t remember when people started to attach the ‘Old’ to his name but it was probably a good while ago. He felt as if he had been old for most of his life and now he wondered whether great slabs of his memory were disappearing. He could still remember days of his childhood in great detail and could even recall the smells of rotting seaweed on Blackpool Beach or the reek of stale fat in the bins outside the chippie on Scorton Avenue. But when it came to remembering what he had for lunch yesterday, his mind was a blank. Funny, that he could remember so clearly the smell of Blackpool Beach but not something as important as what he had for lunch – even though he didn’t eat much these days and all the food tasted the same. His mind wandered back to the days when food tasted better and he thought of the newspaper-wrapped fish and chips his mother would allow him to have on special occasions. The fish was a...