Zed thrums his fingers on the steering wheel as he stares intently at the bright redness of the traffic light. At the edge of his vision he sees a bunch of girls coming down the steps of the Cineplex reliving a moment of a film they've just seen. One girl with a nose stud looks at him as they step onto the street and he feels something in his gut that he guesses is envy.

Envy of youth and the fresh-faced way she could look at him with no hint of consequence.

The lights go green.

Envy, and a regret that's inevitable that that time has passed, something that's gone and forever.

He was that age, he was sitting on a wet barrel beside a GAA pitch in Ballyhooly sharing with the lads a flagon of Bulmer's and a twenty box of Major and thinking privately about laughter in the evenings as the sun wends its way down behind the woods of Castleblagh.

Into first, he squeezes the accelerator gently as if there was an egg between his shoe and the pedal, into second and Zed realizes that the envy and regret are inevitable because he's nearer death, if only in a probabilistic sense.

Zed turns the corner, finds third and accelerates down the rain-wet city street in Summer, as always and ever, towards the end of the road.

^