Hanging In A Jar

Coming home is like drifting off through a film or living through a coma punctuated by an intermittent consciousness. What you see is familiar but things are slightly out of place. Some characters are gone, others reaching the end of their arc. Every so often you fall back asleep. Your life continues. It feels like nothing's changed, though your own lives have been many and your face and manner would confuse those who encounter you too.  The doorbell rings and there's Brenda, hair set and ruddy cheeked, with a wrapped box of After Eights and a bottle of gin. Shall we have some now, together? Frank next door is in his garden working on his model railway. His wife Viv is whispering the village gossip to mum over the top of the garden fence, her white hair and glasses just about visible if you stand on your tiptoes.  The settings change: in the movie, the school gym is no longer festooned with streamers but now empty and abandoned, light streaming through a broken window. In life...