Closing the Decade

Back in Brighton. New Years Eve. Sat on my bed, smoking a cigarette, wondering if I should make a cup of tea. Yes, I think so.

A white pre-January day outside, not cold, but not warm either. The air feels hollow, wiped clean. The decade closing down. The kettle is boiling.

Moved down to Brighton ten years ago yesterday. Unbelievable. Only came down for the millenium weekend, and have somehow ended up here for ten years. Thinking about this as my father drove me back yesterday, as we stopped at gray and drifting service station cafes for breakfast and coffee. Nowhere places, pleasing in their dreaming stillness. Grey skies, barren trees, a landscape offering no comfort but a kind of dreary consolation.

I finally made it across the sand dunes on my last day in Perranporth. A sea mist came down, hazing the distance, making the ocean obscure. Lost amongst the labyrinthine paths. St Piran's cross out in the middle of all this pleasing wilderness. Twenty feet high. A thousand years old? Maybe. St Piran, Cornwall's patron saint, came over from Ireland in the sixth century, falling out with some king. Stood at the base of the cross, situated on a high mound, watching twilight take the landscape. Letting myself drift in the comfort of isolation, listening to the wind, the rain on the grasses, streams hidden by rushes, marshy pools of water, thinking; remember this, remember this forever. Found the lost church too, buried beneath sands, covered in concrete. Allegedly haunted. Found a stone at the foot of the church, slipped it in my pocket. Fragments of history. A pleasing texture, smooth, and remniscent of tides. Wondered back through the empty caravan park, across the beach crowded with dog walkers and families, chased by the darkness settling down. Another year ended, another decade done.

A night of dreams last night. Fragments slipping away already. Kinloss in Scotland, again, walking the streets of Southside. Tall street lamps shining, lining the fence that enclosed the houses. Fallow field between houses, thinking there should be a river here. Thinking I should not be here. Trying to find my old house, lost in Abbey Crescent, not finding it. Almost on the verge of realising it was a dream.

Quiet room. A new cup of tea. Another cigarette. Meeting Sarah for a coffee at midday. Last acts of 2009, closing down the year, shutting the door on the decade.

I hear seagulls in the distance, Brighton's clarion call, and the muted sounds of passing traffic, surprisingly quiet. I lose myself in seagull-songs, their sea-tones and undercurrents, think of the pebbles on the beach and the ceaseless, timeless tides,