Memory is a sly magpie, a seasoned frequenter of thrift fairs and jumble sales, gradually sweeping the worthless tat aside to reveal the hidden treasure behind it. Like a magpie, it needs to be greeted and acknowledged once in a while, and like a magpie, if you try to get really close to it, it usually won’t let you. My own has undoubtedly done some rearranging during its downtime and I find that, amongst the nights of my youth that now seem important, it’s pushed that one with Mark up at the Hollow, by the campfire, to the fore, and, within the night itself, it’s probably shone a light on parts of proceedings that didn’t seem significant at the time and snuffed out others that did. I come back to the music a lot, the smell of the woodsmoke and the hot fermented apples. I come back to Fran’s hands in my hair. I come back to Mark, who will never know what an etched part of me he remains, and I come back to the girl in the long white blouse, standing back from everyone in the pocket of the woods that holds her, the intentness of her gaze towards the American as he played. It seemed like such a small part of the night at the time, but I have never forgotten her face or her holly-wreath hair, and I wonder if one of the reasons I come back to it was something that Michael, my chiropractor, said to me during my treatment after my car crash.