There was a very tall tree growing next to my parents' (or sometimes it was my sister's) house. It was three to four storeys high and its thick branches were fantastically gnarled and twisted with very little foliage. The tree leaned over the house.    

As I drifted away from it I thought that the branches would make a good hiding place for any boy who was running away from home.    

My father was reading a book under a much smaller tree in front of the house. It was a fruit tree and it looked like it had been pruned and shaped only recently. The lawn around it had been replanted also recently. The grass was struggling to grow. Everything looked drained of color.    

And then I was lying on the giant branch of a tree that was being transported on a truck. It must've been a pretty big tree because the branch I was lying on was comfortably wide and it was quite high up from the ground. I wasn't scared of falling but I didn't look down.