Free Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country by Tony Hawks Page A

exotic sounds. Raised Italian voices, or instructions called to a child in French or Spanish, were a positive part of the experience, mainly because they had no meaning. On a beach in my own country I am drawn into the family conflict, however hard I try to shut it out.
    ‘DARREN! GIVE THE BUCKET BACK TO YOUR SISTER!’ shouts an irate dad.
    I immediately check on Darren’s location, observe the tears of the sister, and wonder how the situation will become resolved.
    ‘NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE A BLOODY ICE CREAM! YOU HAD FOUR YESTERDAY!’ shouts a despairing mum.
    ‘Yes,’ I inwardly concur, ‘four does seem an awful lot. The mother seems to have a point.’
    Thus my beach experience is ruined.
    Which is why I came up with my idea.
    ‘Fran doesn’t think it will work,’ I said to Ken, as we chatted over the fence.
    ‘Well, I don’t see why it shouldn’t,’ he said, supportively.
    ‘I’m tempted to give it a try.’
    ‘I’ll help you, if you need a hand.’
    ‘Thanks, Ken.’
    ‘I’ve got a good name for it.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘You can call it the Hawks Harness.’
    ‘Excellent idea.’
    I’m no inventor, but I felt I was onto something with this. The trouble with small swimming pools is that if you want to do any meaningful swimming – the kind that keeps you fit and healthy – then you reach the end of the pool after only a few strokes. It can end up feeling like you’re doing more turning than swimming. What better idea than a harness that ties around your waist and attaches by rope to a pole at the rear of the pool? Essentially a swimming machine, in the same way that you have a running machine. You simply swim on the spot. If Ken thought it could work, then it couldn’t be crazy. This man was rebuilding a tractor. He’d built the house he was living in. He knew what tool would remove a stubborn leg of a piano and, better still, what that tool was called. Ken knew what was possible and what wasn’t.
    ‘Trust me,’ I said to Fran, as I made the online payment for the plastic pool. ‘This will work.’
    ***
    The pool arrived a week later, a few days after some of Fran’s family had come to stay: Ted, her dad, and her half-brother Oli and sister Monica, who were ten and thirteen respectively. And her nan. Nan was in her mid- to late eighties (there was some familial dispute as to her definite age, no doubt caused by her own bogus claims to be younger than she actually was), but she was in good physical health. Mentally, she hadn’t fared so well in the last couple of years. Her memory was definitely on the wane, and she regularly told you the same thing over and over again. On her previous visit to see us in London, before we’d moved, she’d informed me about fifty times that she loved travel. The exact words she uttered on each occasion, never with any variation, are indelibly stamped on my brain.
    ‘I love travel, me. Ed, my husband, he used to come home sometimes and say to me “Do you want to go for a spin in the car?” and do you know? he didn’t need to ask twice. I love travel, me.’
    She’d also told me forty times how she’d felt about moving.
    ‘I never wanted to move to Eastbourne.’
    And thirty-five times how she managed her children financially.
    ‘I always took good care to treat my children equally. If I gave to one, then I always gave to the other.’
    Some days I just couldn’t stop myself from being mischievous.
    ‘Nan, I’ve been wondering lately how you feel about travel?’
    ‘Oh, I love travel, me. Ed, my husband, he used to come home sometimes and say to me “Do you want to go for a spin in the car?” and do you know? he didn’t need to ask twice. I love travel, me.’
    ‘How about your children? Did you give more to one than the others?’
    ‘No. I always took good care to treat my children equally. If I gave to one, then I always gave to the other.’
    I’d usually be belted by Fran before I could ask her how she felt about the move to