I used to think life was meant to be linear — work hard, play fair, get the girl, end of story. Easter ’78 taught me different. It was snakes and ladders all the way. One night you climbed, another you slid. A disco dance, a kiss in the snug, a scarf wrapped round your neck like a promise — ladders. Then the ducked head, the whispered betrayal, the punch on the bus — snakes.
At boarding school, shut off from the girls, I tried to imagine rules, a logic to the whole thing. The only truth I half-understood then, and only fully accept now, is that you have to be on the board. Out there, rolling the dice, taking the knocks, laughing when you tumble, daring to climb again when the chance comes. That was the game. That is the game.
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