Caught in Traps set for Complacent Nostalgics

The wind was up last night, rattling the door of my room, a pleasing ghost story cliche. I lay there unable to sleep, though not really minding, imagining I could hear the sea, just below the wind. My reveries were eventually ended when I had to leave the comfort of my bed for the less welcoming enclave of the bathroom. My sojourn to the bathroom lasted longer than I had originally envisaged when I found I had, don't ask me how, actually locked myself in.
It took me a good few minutes to extricate myself from the bathroom, and by the time I had returned to bed, the wind had lost her charm, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

Strange, I don't remember dreaming recently. Not for days.

I woke up at midday, spent a few hours reading. Finally, I decided I had to go out for a walk. I hadn't left my parents bungalow since I had gone to Truro on Christmas Eve, and was beginning to suffer both cabin fever, and an overdose of Radio 2, which are still insisting on playing Christmas Songs, and which my parents insist on playing all day.
Actually, I did leave the house yesterday, in an attempt to take Misty, my parents border terrier, for a walk. After five minutes, Misty sat down, refusing to walk any further. I remember when she would be quite happy to accompany me for miles and miles, whole afternoons spent lost in the labyrinth of the sand dunes, or exploring the cathedral like caves of the beach.
I left Misty behind, and felt strangely guilty.

I decided to walk along the cliff top path, which would mean I didn't have to walk through the centre of Perranporth, which would be full of Christmas families heading along to the beach for a stroll.
Walking across the fallow field to the path, I noticed the waxing daylight moon above me, pale like summer turning into autumn. A vast sky like memories of October.
The cliff top path is interesting; steep slope on one side falling down to a tumultuous sea, and on the other, crumbling bits of industry littering the landscape. Remnants of tin mining country. Remains of cottages and uncapped mineshafts. Structures with unknown purpose that resemble bridges and railway station architecture. A pile of bricks looking like a hunched figure of a man watching me. There is something almost primal out here. The sea crashes against the rocks with an odd echo, an ancient resonance. The alien-ness of the place only accentuated by the remains of some mine building on the horizon, jagged and strange as some imagined Aztec temple.

I walked back across the heather through the fading light, watched by the moon, and the hunched old man made of bricks.

I went up into the attic after dinner, that strange space full of old books and records, notebooks and sketchbooks from my years at art college. I found an old diary I kept, actually found a few old diaries I kept; 1985, 1986, 1991, and one I kept, off and on, from 1988 to 1995. It was the last that I sat down and flicked through, reading old entries from my time at Southampton. Inserted in the pages were letters from friends, and letters I had written, but never sent.
I never think much about the two years, 1994 - 1996, I spent at Southampton, studying illustration, -not at the slightly prestigious university on the outskirts of town-, but at the then-called Southampton Institute of Higher Education. A strange time in my life, and one that doesn't have the mythic resonance of Worcester, or Scotland, or even Ickenham, where I spent my adolescence. I always assume I was permanently miserable there (undiagnosed depression, inner city housing, a less than inspiring course) but it seemed I was having quite a good time. At least between bouts of misery. Reading the entries bought up questions which can now never be answered. Who was Fabian? Why was I so upset that Duncan and Kelly were kissing? Why was I walking hand in hand through the park with an unnamed girl? Why was I lying drunken in the street after the Network (the club we went to where a pint cost, apparently, 69 pence?). I wished I was back there again, 24 years old, still in higher education, still with that illusion that I knew where my life was going, and that, somehow, everything would get itself sorted out.
I found an old exercise book from school too, this must have dated from 1986, and contained a story detailing my walk to school. In it, I pointed out those landmarks that I had named; the Generator of Ghosts, Dead Man's Hut, Sunlight Wood. I remember the Generator of Ghosts, just down the street where I lived, a 'Danger of Death' sign on the high wooden fence surrounding it. I don't remember Dead Man's Hut though, or Sunlight Wood. Were these just names made up to make the story sound better or did they really exist? Sunlight Wood doesn't ring any bells at all, but there is a vague frisson of remembrance about Dead Man's Hut. (Some image of a white clapboard shack, nestled under trees on an unreal summers day).
I had written this story when we lived in Ickenham, terminal-section of the Metropolitan tube line in London, but the walk referred to where we had lived a year previous, Forres in Scotland.

Tin-mines and diaries, old Mineshafts and old school books. Our lives are filled with ghosts and memories, scattered with abandon about us, inescapable traps set for complacent nostalgics.
I wish...
I stop myself, knowing that I am caught again, for the past is dead, and that is why it continues to haunt us.

For myself, anyway.