Billy Bremner

He grew up in Leeds. This was in the ‘70s, when the world revolved around Billy Bremner and then, when Billy went off to Hull, Gang of Four. In ’80 he moved to Mississauga, lived not far out of the shade of the Square One Shopping Centre and bought himself a ball and kicked it furiously, then more resignedly, against the back wall of The Bay, and bought records by The Undertones and Magazine, walked the old riverbed all the way down to the lake and then back, made a day of it most weeks. Resented his parents something awful.

Near half a century between then and now, a link finer than spider’s web, and this bit of water at the side of the road north of town trying hard to freeze. Some blue bird after the berries is why he stopped and then caught sight of himself in the surface looking like a kid again (it was weird), startled and caught in the broken window of the shoe store south of the flyover, plundered cherry Docs under his arm and sirens already winding up. This was back when he could still run away. People in the city are still in their masks, he thought, as pink Shield piled above the trees north of him like a slurry of pomegranate. His kids were at home and bored to tears, wit’s end, and all he could suggest was cards, because of all the bridge he’d played back in West Yorkshire, that murderous French teacher patrolling all their lunches in her tweed suit and immaculate Stan Smiths, Abba that year winning the Eurovision Song Contest.