It was hard for me to sleep last night. Maybe it had something to do with “Atlas Shrugged”, the book I’m reading for bookclub; perhaps I read for too long and I became overtired, or my eyes were strained by reading small print late at night. Or it could have been that my mind could not switch off after reading page after page of vivid descriptions about railways and the machinations of big business conducted in a bar room – as black as a cellar, with a ceiling “so heavy and low that people stooped when crossing the room, as if the weight of the vaulting rested on their shoulders” – built on the top of a skyscraper. For whatever reason, when at last I put down the heavy tome and rested my head on the pillow, sleep refused to come.

The black clouds, that had earlier blocked out the full moon, had moved on and moonlight filled the chink in the not quite closed curtains of our bedroom. Even with my eyes shut I was aware of the light and my mind’s eye envisaged the light of a train in the distance, and railway lines, reflecting pale yellow, as they disappeared towards the oncoming dot of light. Chris was asleep, breathing heavily and rocking back and forth every twenty seconds (as he does sometimes). After an hour or so I got up and drew the curtains together at the top but the moonlight, still intent on pervading the room, entered through the the double thickness of material and turned the empty space of the room an ethereal grey. I decided to go upstairs to the loo – maybe I would be able to sleep afterwards – and on my way I stopped by the double-glazed door that looked out over the sea and the moon above it; the night had calmed and the waves no longer pounded and spumed their anger at the steadfast seawall.

Back in bed, the bedroom furniture was silhouetted against the strange dark light and as I closed my eyes I was suddenly back in Australia; I was back under the shade of the giant fig trees at Wellington Point (South-side Brisbane); and I was sitting on one of the huge roots which I have known and loved all my life. The trees were always magnificent; if I have grown then so have they, and they seem the same as when Mum and Dad used to take us as children; when Dad used to stand beneath us while we climbed as high as we dared; when we made camps in the undergrowth, when we explored the cliff paths and Dad said, “Trust me, you won’t fall – take my hand”, and he was always right.

And all through the years, at different stages, those same trees have shaded generations of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families and young lovers. From time to time we of those generations all return to reminisce or try to relive whatever memory is most dear to us; whilst the very young and newcomers begin their own happy memories beneath those beneficent boughs.

Last night, before finding sleep at last, I climbed one of the giant fig trees and I did not fall; I had a picnic with a lover from the past, watched my little son on the sea-saw and the swings; sun-baked on the beach with my dad and held his hand; and sat joyfully on one of the roots, so conveniently shaped for sitting upon, whilst surveying the happy scene of sunshine and sea, from within the world of shade. Then I turned on my side and cuddled Chris to make him stop rocking… and I went to sleep.