A Return to Worcester part 1: Last Thursday

I remember walking to Brighton train station. A close day, hot and heavy. I looked between the buildings to the sea, saw to my surprise that sea obscured by thick fog, the tips of church spires blunted and hidden. Oblivion rolling from the sea.

Watching Brighton roll away from my seat in the train was accompanied by that feeling of bright optimism that accompanies most holiday journeys by train. Certainly the most pleasing way to travel, I was quite happy watching the passing landscape. Brighton to Clapham Junction, and from there to Reading.

I had an hour to spare at Reading. I knew Reading of old, from the Spring and Summer of 1994. 22 years old, lomg hair (no beard) and as unsure if myself then as I am now. No youthful arrogance for me. A strange time. Reading was hot and tasted of glass and angles. I walked into town - when was the last time I had done this? Nine years ago when I last saw Mark? Nine years, my god... Red brick buildings and pale air. Pale uncomfortablke light. I found a shop in an arcade, to my delight finding an old horror comic from the 1960s (?). English as well. A rarity. Never heard of it before. 'Fantasy Stories' 'Weird comic eerie' words proclaimed in a diamond, and across the title 'The Unknown and Supernatural'. Delighted (I love old horror comics) I returned to the train.

Watching the landscape change. Train running past stations I knew. Evesham. Moreton-In-Marsh. Kingham. Honeybourne (so close to Bretforton) Pershore... Then a silence, and I look out of the window.
Back.
Back again.
Worcester Foregate Street.

I ring Joe Bird, and he agrees to meet me in the high street. As I wait for him I taste the air, that landlocked silky heat. Living by the sea for so long I had forgotten this, that hot electric taste, that scent of earth and something lost.
People talking in old accents. Looking about me. My past. A sense of unreality, of something...
A man comes up to me. An old man? I can't tell. He shows me something. Tarot cards, of a sort. The Archangel Raphael warning of 'change' and 'a new phase'. I felt a slight panic sweep through me. What was this? What was going on? 'You know what that is don't you'. I looked. A common occult symbol (too late at night to look for it now, but it's the one connected to the medical profession. I'll find out tomorrow...) 'You've seen it before haven't you...' I tried to tell him that, yes, I had seen it before, but he was not listening. 'With your 3's and your 7's...' I looked at him and he looked at me. 'There's a snake wrapped around the lampstand...'
Joe turned up with Eva, his dog. I backed away from the man.
The sun was hot. Everything tasted of metal and nostalgia, and something old and powerful and strange.