A Reverie for Old Rainfalls

Used to drift on the afternoons, a big absence, an amnesia. I remember windows, and wallpaper patterns, and something that reminds me of an attic carpet. Wake late, stay up till the early hours. The summer of 1997, 25 years old. £50 a week to spend on cigarettes and albums. I must have spent the afternoons sleeping, dreaming away the days till the second year of uni began again.
Sometimes there would be rain and storms.
A thunderstorm, and sat in the playroom watching the storm, the rain on the corrugated plastic roof above me. Heavy driving rain, cigarettes, Silk Cut and cups of tea. And there. In the open door leading to that long, green garden, a Rottweiler. We looked at each other, both startled for a second. both of us leapt to the door at the same time. The dog barking, and I put my shoulder against the door. All my strength to close it because the dog wanted to get in. Angry, joyous barking. Locking the door. Comfort-click of the key. Run up three flights of stairs to my room. Dog barking at Rich next door, snapping at his hand.

Miss the petrol station rhythms sometimes. Those rainy afternoons that littered the years from 2002 - 2007. Darkening skies, and a series of customers so predictable and expected, you could set your watch by them; taxi drivers, white van drivers, the harried mother who always bought 10 silk cut every day... and in that unconscious rhythm a kind of peace. Drawings on the counter, whatever I wanted to play on the stereo, and on those rainy afternoons that tipped the year into autumnn, the houses on the horizon of Hove Park became a distant unreachable mystery.

The beach is yellow and full of pebbles and I avoid it. I don't know why.

'A Deeper Kind of Slumber' by Tiamat on stereo.

In the autumn of 2000, my first year in Brighton, there was a deep luxuriant darkness. I remember catching the 49 bus back from town to the Moulscoomb estates where I lived. Sat on the upper deck of the bus at the front. Why do I always remember it being dark after work then? 5:30pm void, and there were lightning flashes, and nobody I know now had moved down to Brighton yet.

Landings, hallways, corridors, the table by the front door where the post is gathered. No-one ever has anything but official looking letters from banks and the council tax office.
I must go outside in ten minutes.
Seagulls.
Somebody shouting.
More like talkking.

A pile of books on the shelf above the kettle.
An upended chair above the wardrobe.
An empty pot noodle carton (spicy curry) on the floor.

There are curtains that I can draw against the 'cooker' and the sink. The latter consists of a grill and an oven that cannot be used at the same time as the hob above. The grill will set off the fire alarm at the slightest provocation.

I used to drift on afternoons.