The Reading Habits of Insomniac Signalmen

The post-midnight train back from London. Victoria to Brighton. 1am tiredness. Everyone else drinking wine and brandy in the busy carriages. Staring out of the window at abandoned buildings, the milky silver of moonlight on the rails. Watching the empty alleyways by warehouse wastegrounds. Lingering tracts of snow or frost on empty car parks. This is street lamp country, glowing halos in haunted streets, watching the night. This is their dominion. We stop for a while by a train station building. A light is on inside. Insomniac signalmen. Can see nothing of the interior, just a row of books in the frosted window, their titles illegible and forever lost. The train rides on.

Crash on Andy's sofa for the night. Can't be bothered to walk home, or suddenly superstitious at sudden Saturday night dangers on the streets. Not drunk enough - not drunk at all, had only had a half all day - to wonder happily home. Strange dreams on the sofa. Echoes of November. The freezing air of his flat.

I leave early afternoon. Andy is still asleep. Meet Jen at her house at 3:00pm. Walk up London Road to Preston Park, past Somerfield, where I first worked as a shelf stacker ten years ago. The Sunday skag-heads. The Sunday pubs. Crowds of men watching a football match. Cold, cold air. I eat sandwiches bought from Tescos. Wishing January would end, but knowing it is replaced by February. Cold, drear February. Memories of Worcester. Bleak street corners with Joe, ranting about tarot cards. That cold second month sun. The Hollow Deathlights.
We have a cup of tea at the Rotunda cafe in the park. Shutting up for the day. Twilight creeping from the corners. Sit outside and smoke cigarettes. Lizzie joins us. I watch a man pick up a fragment of ice from the pond and place it, almost delicately, on the table. An offering to the uncaring gods of January perhaps. I watch a dog try to leap across the pond, and doesn't make it. Wet dog in the water. He gets out of the pond. Isn't bothered. Shakes himself and continues bounding about.

Sunset behind bare trees. Sharp branches delineated against the sky. Walk through the darkening Preston Park, up to the churchyard, haunted by a woman, who is seen only on January afternoons. Tombs fading into earth. The locked up church. Skittering noises in the undergrowth. Climb over the low walls and onto the back lawn of Preston Manor. Only a few shreds of daylight left now. Sit on benches and tell ghost stories, but the place is too serene. London Road traffic noise lulling like the sea. The red lights like flares on the other side of the dark pool of the park.
Down into the pet cemetary. Walkways and bushes. Walled in. Look back at the church. Italian rumours reaching up into the sky.
The frozen pond.
The pleasure of cracking the ice.

End up at the Prestonville. I drink a cup of tea while Jen and Lizzie drink pints. We talk about tarot cards and gypsy ancestors, family tales and comedians. I leave them in the pub, walk back through Seven Dials. The temperature guage says that it is 4'. Four minutes above freezing. Walking down the hill just past St Annes Well Gardens, I look behind me at the city. A blood moon, pink and milky, sits above the horizon, a pregnant premonition floating motionless in space.
A deception of course. Nothing stays still, but sometimes the lie is enough.

I think of those insomniac signalman, wonder what they'll be reading this frozen winter night.