Gloomy Monday

Last nights sense of strange melancholy slipped into the day, a gloomy fog that would not lift. Everything laid over with a light miasma, like cobwebs, of a strange sadness, a disconnectedness I could not quite place.
Disorientated too by the shift in the clocks. Home now. Emmerdale is on the television, and it all feels the wrong time somehow.
The painter seems to have been today, but I don't think the painting job is finished. Instead, the ceiling of my room seems to have been sanded. A motley skin of some pale disease, all white with beige patches. I imagine the painter will be back tomorrow. I do not like the thought of a stranger being in my private space when I am not here.

On the way to work this morning, I passed by a stumbling man. He was walking the same way as myself. He was forties I suppose, dressed in rough clothes and with an accent I couldn't place somewhere from the North of England or Scotland. I couldn't really tell. 'Has anyone got some heroin?' he yelled, still stumbling 'Has anyone got any heroin you bastards... I hate Mondays... What are you doing up you stupid, stupid people? I need some heroin...'
I gradually lost him as I speeded up my walk.

When I left work tonight it was full dark. I walked past what used to be Borders, stepping over the lights embedded in the ground. As I did so I was suddenly struck by an eerie thought.
Ten years ago tonight, at the very same time, I was at the very same place.
I remember. 6:00pm. I was meeting Jim and Susie for when they finished work at Spoils. A Post-Hallowe'en comedown drink. I was waiting for Jim, walking through these very same lights embedded on the ground.

The evening trips and stumbles on.
Everyone on Emmerdale sounds cheerful.

I think I might have another cup of tea.