“And walking back from the river I remember the galling loneliness of my adolescence, from which I do not seem to have completely escaped. It is the sense of the voyeur, the lonely, lonely boy with no role in life but to peer in at the lighted windows of other people’s contentment and vitality. It seems comical – farcical – that, having been treated so generously, I should be struck with this image of a kid in the rain walking along the road shoulders of East Milton.”
