Ah, the 1980s: a simpler time when Sundays were deadly, the generation gap between parents and their kids was enormous, and a pint cost 50p. The frisson of casual violence was everywhere, apparently. Our narrator, upon leaving school and setting off to travel, had no sense at all of where he was going or what he would find. Spoiler: it was a lot of alcohol and a near-death experience on a granite rock face.

While wandering down a steep and unfamiliar street in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, a force seven gale blowing in his face, he looks up to cross the road and sees a back garden running up the hillside opposite. It ends in a granite rock face about 30ft high, and in that moment, he has a vivid flashback to being sat on top of it, watching a group of people in the garden below. He can’t conjure their faces, but the memory is all too real: the sun on his face, a woman calling up: “Don’t break your neck!” He can tell she’s not worried and neither is he. Nobody is. It’s a party and they’re young and they’re drunk and they’re carefree, without a worry in the world. Or at least, that’s how he remembers it.

He continues down the street, spooked by the power of the recollection, how it has ambushed him. He stands outside the house. He could swear he’s never seen it before. Did he come to the party over the cliff? Should he knock on the door? “Hi, this is going to sound weird but I was in your back garden about 42 years ago and I haven’t a clue why but I’ve just remembered it like it was yesterday …” The answer, presumably, is no. But it’s a nice thought.