The Churchkeeper

10:10pm Sunday night.
Trying to draw to draw (A1 size) the figure of a woman on (what appears to be) a giant rocking horse in a hopefully-to-be creepy attic. Trying to watch Joss Whedon's 'Serenity' as well, but am only hearing the music as a pleasing background ambience, and have no idea of anything going on.
A hot day today. Down at the seafront with Em, pass the Sunday afternoon crowds smug with their surprised ice creams and hastily retrieved shorts. The book stall just past the old pier was open. The smell of old books I never buy; school fetes and summer days heavy with the melancholy scent of barbecues.
Dreamt a couple of nights ago about the street lamps of Southside. Can't remember anything else now, but just a feeling of something deep, almost tropical, as if that housing estate had been built deep in a jungle. A few dreams last night too I remember. In one I was here, in the flat. There were a number of other people about. I'm not sure I knew them even in the dream, let alone in waking life. Some kind of party. Andy may have been orchestrating it. An older woman came up the stairs. I have a feeling she may have been connected to our landlady. She introduces herself as 'the Churchkeeper'. I don't know what this means. In the dream I try to warn Andy. The stairs are behind me (I'm in the living room as I write).
Keep thinking about the Churchkeeper walking there.
Obviously.
Also dreamt of university again. Not had one of these dreams for a while. In one part of the dream I was heading to a lecture / class, and went through a number of rooms / studios / corridors I had not been through before. The interior of the university was like a cross between Harrow College and Abbotsfield Comprehensive back in the latter half of the eighties. I said to myself that it was 'amazing' that the campus was so familiar to me, and yet I had never seen these rooms before. A vague feeling that I wasn't meant to be there. Other students looking at me as I passed through. Another part of the dream contained that old anxiety narrative of having an essay to do and not being able to complete it on time, or even knowing what to write. In this essay, I had to write about how to set up a direct debit over the phone (Hmm. Shades of work here). Time was running out, and I had no idea how I was going to even start the thing, let alone finish it.
Got back home at twilight tonight. Strange how quick and sudden nightfall is in November when the day has felt more like summer. Sweet relief of the night-chill. Walking the streets between here and Portland Road when the street lamps came on. Scarlet start-up hues, all lamps set to sunset. Someone was taking a photograph of the lamps hanging in the Mews when I got here. Stood across the road, a strangely furtive figure. I wonder if I made my way onto a photograph as I unlocked the doors and ascended the stairs, following the footsteps of the Churchkeeper not twelve hours before?