Lilac Cadillac

Synopsis

Have you ever found yourself in a conversation where someone throws 'Family is everything' around, like it's cheap confetti? It had been many long years after, and the tightly-knit film-making family of Moorcrofts would listen in on conversations like these, and not react, correct, elaborate, or judge. Maybe because they made a pact to keep life 'after' Sue's birthday to themselves...

Prologue

"Who am I? Oh, there's no need for an introduction. The colour says it all. It was my birthday. Well, was going to be. It was PURPLE. Do I like purple? Since I'm going to have to speak on behalf of all, let US put it into perspective for you. We don't harbour any animosity towards a purple door, or tie, or a dress. But, can you for a moment imagine, suddenly walking into a purple world? If I had to wager a guess, it would have been incontestable that; in the whole of the known world - and just to be clear, I'm; to be fair, including the wildest most psychedelic of conjured-up dreams of the Hippy-era - of fashion, that it just may have been 'the' purple-est of places, that day. Any more purple, and if word got out far enough, just over the patient hills that locked this town off from the world, and the fashion police had been summoned that day, they would have arrived with reinforcements and locked-up the lot of us. No doubt, they would have maced us into submission and ankle-cuffed all, right down to the Sinbad the three-legged cat and Bella the dried-up cow. There had been sufficient things purple, hidden in the barn under two of Granddad's Rolls's covers already for a week before - to completely decorate every barn and farmhouse, and every house in town, and it's likely that there would have remained a few items for at least half the cemetery in the valley on the way to school. Now that I've mentioned that... I'm not sure whether I'm filled with anger or a ladle-full of satisfaction, given where we are today. It's gravely difficult to say after so many years. But, what's done is done and nothing will fix history. No matter how many cakes my siblings will sell for charity as they trod door to door and try to guilt people away from their televisions. Or not skip any more Sunday morning trips anymore, as they pass the cemetery on the way to sing themselves into a better mood. That is if the results of praying took too long - which it did for us as siblings at least. It took too long. Or, who knows, maybe the heavenly granting of wishes, had got stuck in a holy bottleneck on the way down. There'd been a lot of praying going on from that day - as I recall. And if I had to sum it up, God had his angels work in shifts to attend to all those prayers suddenly leaving the old church. Granddad said to the priest, that in all his farming life, those cuffed floorboards that kept the church gallery up - closer to God, had never squeaked and moaned - nearly as much under the weight of so many people. Today, I wonder how full the church will be soon - now that we saved God some time, to rather attend to the other prayers of people who could never wait thirty years. Hell, can you believe it's been that long? Anyway...