Forgotten Places

The rain is back, heralding my ensuing six days off work with a too-familiar white gloom. I sit in the bedsit, having just finished a portion of cod and chips, feeling full-up and sleepy. I remember last summer. I could sleep for days at a time.
Looking at Googlemaps tonight, during that last hour of work, at those forgotten places of my history; Southampton where I studied illustration from 1994 - 1996, and Harrow-on-the-Hill, where I took my first foundation course in art and design, 1991 - 1992 (I dropped out in the Easter. It was strange looking at Harrow-on-the-Hill again. I've not really looked at it online before. I remember the steps down from the tube station. The photographs were taken in autumn, and seemed to describe a cool and beguiling place. London does autumn well, unlike Brighton.
Southampton seemed to be full of roundabouts. I remember my first few days of living there, that panicky feeling of not yet knowing anyone in the city, and not knowing the city at all. Living in a house down Clovelly Road before other house-mates moved in. Impaled Nazarene albums and Silk Cut cigarettes. I remember watching the second episode of the X-Files in that house, being startled by a knocking at the door. Two shadows against the frosted glass. I knew no-one there, hadn't even had a conversation yet in the city. I turned the light off, unaccountably afraid of these strangers, who were no doubt after some long gone previous tenants.
My room is humid, as if this House of Bedsits is located in some jungle region, perhaps in Vietnam or Brazil. I could almost imagine this, were it not for the too-Brighton sound of buses and taxis. The primordial caterwaul of the seagulls though would not, however, be out of place in a jungle environment.