Time and Tide (Part One)
1970
Nan is standing at the gas cooker, with its eye level grill, boiling mince for the cat. She adds Angostura bitters, because Smokey likes it that way. Nan has the additive because she likes it in her Gordon’s gin. Nan, that is, not the cat. Nan drinks pink gin in moderation, possibly because her hands and mouth are normally occupied with a Players Navy Cut untipped cigarette which is either newly lit, its blue smoke curling upwards, or half smoked with a length of ash still attached or almost entirely consumed, in which case it is being used to light the fresh one already between her lips.
“Yes, well,” Nan is saying, “a gift isn’t truly a gift when given with conditions or expectations,…”
