The Eeriest Part of a Winters Day

It's that hour before twilight. Those few short hours of December light give way to a pale washed out quality. Just went for a cigarette outside of work. Couldn't concentrate on reality, yet being, somehow, hyper-aware of that reality; the cyclist who had to stop before a car, the man selling bird whistles on the corner, the ubiquitous Christmas shoppers, the ragged man who stared at me a bit too long. Everything has that slightly unreal quality, a fluid miasma that threatens to flow and form into pools, wherein may lie vast seas, crossed by haunted navigators with faulty maps and ramshackle boats... When twilight falls in December, and in December, twilight never fully leaves the sky (that reddened strip just above the horizon), our thoughts turn to home, to sleep, to shutting the curtains against the night, forgetting the darkness, seeking our nepenthe in alcohol and television... Need to call in at the chemists after work, call down the angels of Paroxetine to help stem this insiduous stream of depression. Time fragmenting. Each breath taken in the cold air redolent of a thousand other remembered breaths in cold air; Ruth's house in Worcestershire, my parents house in Cornwall, travelling by train, racing the night across the country, trying to get home before darkness falls. The present time seems superceded by past times, ghost-times, and our soul seems stretched across decades. Eleven minutes before I'm on the phone again, carrying out a survey talking to people whose grasp of English is, to say the least, basic. Shall I go out for another cigarette, or content myself with the one I have just had? The sky is continuing to grey outside the window, tinged with deep winter blue. Tom is talking to me about claustrophobia; 'would you ever go caving?', Pam has just left the office. Four minutes to four pm. The eeriest hour of a winters day coming to an end, and night has begun her ascendance. I shouldn't shut the curtains against the night, but go out into those dark streets, lose myself in those pools of abandoned lamplight, blossoming in night swells...