Pixel Juice

PROLOGUE - WATCH

When I was a young kid in junior school, perhaps seven or eight years old, one day this lad called Colin Bradshaw comes up to me in the playground.

'What time is it, Noony?' he asks.

'I don't know,' I reply.

'You mean you haven't got a wristwatch?'

'No.'

'I've got one. It's a special watch, like spies use. It's invisible.'

Now this Colin Bradshaw was the toughest kid in the class, and he was always hanging around with his gang, and playing tricks on the other kids.

'Wow! Invisible!' says I. 'Can I see it?'

'It's invisible, stupid! Anyway, I haven't got it on me today. It's at home. You can have it if you want. We can do swaps.'

So we made this deal, that Colin would bring the invisible watch in the next day, and I would bring my model of the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 (complete with ejector seat and guns that came out of the front and everything). This was back in the Sixties, and the James Bond car was easily the best toy of the time, everybody wanted one. Especially Colin Bradshaw.

'OK,' he says the next day. 'Give us the car then.'

So I gave him the car.

'Right. Hold your hand out. Palm up, stupid.'

I hold my hand out, and he puts his hand into his pocket and pulls it back out, holding the invisible watch. And he places the watch, gently, in my trembling palm.

And I believed…