In some other universe, you and I didn’t play

football as kids. We weren’t lucky enough to

have Mr Walker as our teacher.

The team photograph doesn’t exist in this other

place, so people wouldn’t wonder why we looked

so serious, you and I.

Or maybe through some weirdness, we lost

the cup final, so the victory meal at the

chippie would have been cancelled.

Or at least that Thursday would be different in

some other way and something else would

have happened, possibly.

We might have stayed friends as we got older,

instead of brawling in the dust under a piano

in the music room.

Maybe we’d have avoided Mr Postle and his

plimsoll, even decided to stay on in the sixth

form; done A levels and university.

I wouldn’t have become an apprentice at

Drax, wasting five years before going back to

college to do something that felt right.

And you wouldn’t have died at sixteen,

asphyxiated by a conveyor belt, while trying

to earn a bit of summer cash on a farm,

wondering what to do with your life.