The best adventures in the hours of darkness

I’m about seven years old. My sister, five. We’re on holiday in England’s West Country. The long summer day has dwindled, and we fall asleep to new-forged memories of tramping through woods and fording creeks.  

Late – how late? – our parents come into our room and shake us awake. They lead us bleary-eyed into the night, wrapped in our duvets. And they point at the skies, where the Milky Way glimmers above: a cloudy-pale stripe in the firmament. Our world expands. 

Years later, student days. A cold winter evening in Oxford. Gone midnight and changed for bed, I glance out of the window – and it’s started to snow, heavily. I wake the woman who’s now my wife and we get dressed, quickly, as the snow settles. We laugh into the night as the city of stone and spires is blanketed; impossibly, pristinely beautiful. We tango in the snow, our footprints glowing in moonlit streets. 

Some time after that, on the other side of the world, Taipei. Emerging from a bar in Xinyi, very late and very merry. The bartender has given us directions: one road up, on the left. The teppanyaki stall is always there. There is no menu. In the open air, on fragile stools, we watch the creation of – and then devour – the best fried rice of our lives.  

And again, later still. A typhoon has delayed our flight home from Tokyo. We party through the rain and wind in the cramped bars of Golden Gai, losing umbrellas and singing along to The Beatles alongside tourists and salarymen. We can’t – or just don’t – go home. 

Much closer to the present day, in the heart of Hong Kong. I’ve been out – how late? – and caught the last ferry home. The top deck is open to the skies. I drink up a beer, drink in the harbour. The city’s lights are dwindling, as even the latest of office workers have gone home. A cloudy, glimmering strip in the small hours. I smile like I can see the Milky Way.