This last week has been a triumph of meteorological gloom that is absolute, even to the extent that it has started to remind me of the first lines of Edgar Allan Poe short stories; so all-encompassing, so over-the-top in their melodrama that one cannot help but be impressed.
Couldn't help but stare out of the window at the sea all day. There was no colour out there, nothing but rain flinging itself at the windows of the call centre. The horizon of the sea softened into a sickly white, and the distances of Brighton fading into a carnivorous void that was nonetheless completely without any kind of drama or tension whatsoever.
Sat in my bedsit now. Still raining outside.
Days that remind me of living in Forres, dark Sundays in a house overshadowed by the Black Woods on top of the hill. In the cosy living room with series of books (often Fighting Fantasy) or comics, watching Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica on VHS, drawing superheroes on pieces of paper, and everywhere that still-gloom of Sundays sinking into everything.
At some point, often after dinner, I would go to my room, forgotten through the long and headache-y afternoons. My room would be a cold and unfriendly place, abandoned during the day. There was always something a little spooky about returning to a bedroom after having no0t been in there the entire day, particularly if it was just getting dark, and out there, up the slope of the garden, the Black Woods looking down.
As I walked back tonight, I watched the rivers of water run beside the pavement, rushing ionto the drains and into the undercity, and I am home now, and it is still raining out there.
