Driving Back to Cornwall

Outside of Brighton, the snow has an edgy, grey look. Swept to the sides of the road, blanketing embankments. Bits of hedges poking through like guilty bodies. Remnants of a badly concealed murder.
Passing through nowhere towns, fascinating provincial backwaters. Hairdressers with punning names. Tiny towns that seemed full of nothing but takeaways and Indian restaurants.
The motorway. Nothing but that long perspective into the distance. Grey skies. No colour anywhere. Listening to phone-in shows on the radio. One woman complaining about her 'jag' being pelted by snowballs. A police officer talking about 'ice-assassins'. Juvenile delinquents packing stones into snowballs. Mob attacks on the streets of provincial backwaters... The regular interruption of the news, a darker tale haunting the day, an architect who has disappeared in Bristol, keys and phone found in her house, no sign of her though.
The five-legged stag on top of a gate leading into the grounds of some vast country manor. Five legs to stop it, from one vantage point, being seen as a three legged stag. Apparently. On another gate a lion. A high wall barring entry, and over that wall a click-clacking area of leafless woodland. Snow on the fields, and the hedges that cut the white a velvety almost liquid black.
Night falls about an hour before we reach Perranporth, the road cutting through country unleavened by street light.
Ten minutes past midnight now. Sat on the bed in the spare room. When I first spent a night here, I was twenty seven years old, way back in 1999.
Leaving Brighton this morning, somehow, seems even further back.