AND I THOUGHT    Of you in the hills and mountains   Surrounded by snow capped peaks   Deep valleys and running clear waters   Leaping deer and snorting pigs   And then I thought of tarmac   Bitumen, concrete and home now   Where telephones are linked   And computers whirred   Screens were saved and keyboards jammed   And then I thought again   I've never lived in the hills!   The "Rolling hills of ...."   Maybe, but never in the hills   We just climbed hills, her and I   Threw snowballs at each other   She bore our children   Then we divorced   But I've never lived in the hills.   Isn't memory a wonderful and flexible thing   To change "Rolling Hills ..." to hills   Poverty to wealth   From divorce to separation   From snorting pigs to Christmas dinners   From leaping deer to a Sunday meal   Ah our memory is a precious thing   But I have never lived in the hills.  Ewan Elliott  COPYRIGHT 1999