A Day Spent Alone in a Single Room

Three posts in one day. Far too many, but such things happen when rain and financial concerns forbid any kind of expedition into the outside world. I quite enjoy my own company, but I don't particularly enjoy it when I have to spend it at home. I have never really got the hang of buildings, particularly not those buildings that I ostensibly call 'home'. Even when living in the luxury of Wilbury Crescent, I would find a day in on my own to be slightly wearing. Living here, in a small bedsit, a single room, is nearly intolerable. It has been interesting though, in a slightly masochistic sort of way. The morning's enjoyment of a day off led into an afternoon of listlessness. After the afternoon's entry, I unsurprisingly slipped into sleep. I woke up at 7:00pm, tidied my room, and made myself some cheese on toast. This seemed to take me two hours. I listened to both albums by Bat For Lashes, and one by a German electro-goth outfit with the rather unlikely name of Megadump. It was only after I had woken that what I most feared about spending a day alone in a single room happened, namely that cabin fever melancholy. This melancholy is always mixed in with an almost painful nostalgia. Usually, one of my great pleasures in life is that of remembering. I feel sorry for the new-age believers of the credo that the present is all you have. I feel that these people lack something - how can they only have one time frame to live in? No wonder their books are so vapid. Spirituality for primary school children. On days like this though, the nostalgia comes armed with warnings. Prickly memories. The past seems a very far off place. The hot summer of 1995, the warm, wet spring of 2002, when I first started working at the petrol station. All that seems to exist is the room. The four walls, and the window showing an outside world as unreal as the Doctor Who story 'The Robots of Death' that I watched this evening. Maybe it isn't nostalgia. Maybe it is the lack of nostalgia that makes days as these so melancholic. No history to explore, no past days to hide, and find yourself in. Nothing but the present, and when that present is four walls only in a bedsit that looks like some shabby hotel room... Maybe this is what it is like when there is only the present.
No matter how dreadful the day is tomorrow, I shall go for some kind of walk, even if the rain forces everyone else to stay inside. I should have gone this evening, through the twilight, down to the pier... or maybe just walked the half suburban streets on the other side of the Old Shoreham Road, and found some solace in their dreaming stillness.
The last hour of the day, and I feel insomnia on me, as if I have already laid down to sleep. I hear cars pass by in the rain, the sound of voices in the street outside. The Portugese woman in the bedsit next to mine unlocks and opens her door. I hear her footsteps on the landing.