Lost in the Iron Lung Days

A day robbed of brightness, an iron lung day. Breathing in February, the air all thick and white and slow.
From the window of the call centre, the sea was all grey and choppy. Foamy explosions marred by the cars and the road of the seafront road whose name I can never remember. Didn't see anyone walk down the steps to the beach.
Deserted pebbles.
The ghost of the dog that's said to walk the beach walks there alone today.

Walking back home tonight to the bedsit I felt like continuing walking. The gloom that the bedsit seems to generate is strongest not  when I'm here, but when I'm approaching here. I felt like walking anyhow. Through the gloomy twilight, and not through anywhere picturesque either, but an industrial landscape full of docklands, factories, abandoned waste grounds where crooked street lamps flicker morse code messages for the ghosts of detectives.
Walking to find a harbour that couldn't exist, even in these most fictional of places.

7:18, Friday night.
The House of Bedsits is silent.
I saw the cleaner tonight, when I returned. An old man, goblin-like, the ghost of all the old school caretakers who were ever weird when you were at school. I presume he cleans the bathrooms and the toilets, but I only ever see him on the stairs, walking between the levels.
I say hello to him, and he never replies.
Just smiles back and his mouth always seems to have too many teeth.