A Year Ago this Weekend

A year ago yesterday that Telegen, the old call centre, went into administration and we lost our jobs. It barely feels like six months ago, never mind a year. May felt somehow later in the year than it does this year. I really can't understand the surprise that I constantly feel at the ever accelerating passage of time. I really would have thought that I might have groiwn used to it. In a year's time, I'm going to be 40. If the last year has passed by like 6 months, then the next year might pass like 5 months, which means that I will turn 40 at the end of summer, rather than next March, as I should...
A year ago exactly was a Saturday afternoon, and I was in Worcester with Joe Walmsley. We had spent the day walking through our old haunts, old houses we lived, the college, old parks... I think we were sat on top of Fort Royal Hill smoking cigarettes, about to return to Joe Bird's house (he was playing cricket in Malvern all day) to watch Doctor Who, before the final leg of our memory tour up London Road... I was in total shock from the job-loss, and the stroll around the city I had once lived in was both surreal and pleasantly distracting. I remember the summer-hot air, a sense of panic at having about £30, and rent to pay the next week, bills going out... As I sat on Fort Royal Hill, I seriously considered the potentiality of moving back to Worcester at some point.
The two Joes went out that night to The Cardinal's Hat, but that sense of panic I had almost been fending off had descended in full, and after one pint I headed back to Joe Bird's house, where I spent the evening in the company of his dog, Eva, playing the guitar, drinking his cans of beer, and chain smoking in the garden. I remember the deep, velvety black of the Worcestershire night, more intense and starry than these somehow pale nights in Sussex.
I slept badly in the spare room, knowing that I was to return home the next day to whatever chaos was waiting for me... the future, for once, truly unknown. I slumbered, rather than slept. I was aware of the two Joes coming in at some point. I remember the early dawn outside, and as it got lighter and lighter, my own dread at having to return came over me.
After I had fully awoken, and was waiting to leave for the train, I remember the bells of the cathedral, strange and nostalgic, summer-chimes, for a season that had had such an unexpected start.
Unbelievable that it is all a year ago.