Oldton could well have been wiped out by a great fire.

My dad was practically a chain smoker, so he was as likely as anyone to drop a match or a butt in the wrong place. And remember the brush factory with its timber yard? An accident waiting to happen.

The whiff of burnt ash from the Oldton tobacco jar, the references to fire from other Oldton contributors: they tell me that my disappeared town is probably nothing but a thin black layer in the soil that amateur archaeologists will overlook in their hurry to find valuable fossils or Roman remains.

All is burned. Just hot air and smoke. The whisp from my dad's last cigarette. The deadly haze from his car's exhaust...