At the age of six or seven I first discovered an odd sensation, distinct from the usual experiences on the childhood warpath. Branded a responsible pupil, I had been sent on some errand and was walking down an empty corridor. The school was small but this space looked vast and strange on my own. Away from crowds, from the worries of classroom politics and watchful staff, my field of vision increased. Little details of the place were well known to me, players in imaginary dramas acted out while standing in line or being herded between rooms. The flecked paint in velvety blue and white showed me galaxies - I always felt I could reach into their space. The rows of coat hooks were impaling torture racks. But now for the first time I noticed the physical dimensions of the place - the height of the ceiling and expanse of floor tiles more usually interrupted by many small bodies. It was early summer, a sunny day, and the windows hung like illuminated icons on the dark walls. Turning a corner, I noticed a double-door standing open, a door which had only ever been tight shut, its two halves welded together by green gloss paint. From the outside, I had seen its dull shine, reflecting mercury skies and vague playground shadows. Now it was studded with diamonds. A breeze picked at the trees on the playing field, lifting their leaves with a quiet hiss, some glowing golden-lime, some with backs of reptile grey. Just beyond the door, the pebbledashed step was cool in the shade - I imagined its roughness on my palm - while summer intruded inside the building, reflected on the polished floor in tiled sunshine. Approaching the door, I felt this strangeness: it was like a nostalgia for the present moment, or a first sense of losses to come with the passage of time. Physically, goosebumps bloomed along my arms, while internally I felt hot and bloody. This was raw apprehension of the inevitable poignancy of life: that beauty must evoke sorrow in a world of contrasts and death. And that it is precisely the knowledge of decay and endings which gives summer trees and lofty blue skies their desperate sweetness. This feeling has endured, veering between sentimental wistfulness and bleak despair. I still want to run through that doorway into dissolving sunshine and vegetation and pollen. But I control myself. I stopped for a moment, enough to drink in the picture, and moved on.