I always thought my Aunty Jan was a film star.

Perhaps it was her long nails varnished to a glossy red or her lip stick and carefully applied make up.

Perhaps it was the twinkle in her eye and the prettiness she wore so easily or the way she bent down to look at we adoring children, paying us a rare and beautiful moment, a snippet of another life, a gift other worldly and mysterious.

Thirty years on
and I can’t shake the feeling that she glides on charmed, celluloid magic and lives the screen life, passing effortlessly between the real, the silver, and the flickering multicoloured.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.