A Night when No-One Passes By

A flat grey sky, or there was but darkness has fallen now, or I think it has. Drew my curtains jusr before twilight so hard to tell.
One of those low, daydreamy days, drizzle and ennui, neither particularly unpleasant. The sea undulates, but waves can't seem to break in the sluggish air. The day is haunted by sleep.

Looking out of my window earlier, I was struck by how similar it suddenly felt to last December when I moved in here. I watched people wrapped against the cold head up the slope of the street. A skinhead man who looked drunk spitting as he crossed the street. Somewhere I couldn't see, a couple argued loudly, a nasty, violent sound.

After work, I headed over to Andy's flat for a cup of tea. We both agreed that despite the slightly autumnal air, it was all still rather humid. He complained of not being able to sleep. Not a problem I have had since starting work, it must be said. He is heading back home to Middlesbrough for a week next weekend, and when he returns he (finally) starts his care home job. Another new chapter. September will be disappearing into October, and the last shifts in the factory of this year will have begun.

A few autumn leaves below Brighton's few trees. They look disconsolate on the pavement and remind me of November. Last November. Sleeping on Andy's sofa while waiting to move in here. Doesn't seem that long ago. Time flickering and juddering forward too quickly. Come the autumn equinox I will only have a year and a half before I turn 40. Really doesn't seem that long away, even if it does seem impossible that I will be in my forties.

In the front window of the ground floor flat of the Death-House a few houses down, someone had left in the window, a play figure of the Incredible Hulk. It looked ragged and torn, a haunted object staring out at passers by, a childs voodoo doll, something that watches the street at night when no-one passes by.

I hear the silence on the stairs in this house of bedsits, the quiet in the halls and the bathrooms on each floor. Even below the music I'm Playing (a band called 'Love Spirals Downwards') tonight seems silent. A welcome silence.

Through the crack below my door, I see a strip of yellow light. Someone moving through the stairs and the halls, past the bathrooms and the shut doors of each bedsit, the letters to old tenants ('return to sender') on the mantelpiece by the front door.

Autumn creeps about us tonight, quiet and persistent as a dream that lingers long into the day.