Petrol Station Spring-Times

I remember the early springs of the mid-petrol station years, back when I lived in the studio flat on Buckingham Street.
It was always an absolute joy when it got warm and light enough to enjoy being outside again. I hated that flat so much that any time I spent there passed by in a mixture of depression and anxiety. I lived in fear, for little reason, of my landlord, the sinister Dr Ra, and the place was so cramped and unhomely, it made even the bedsit look like a beacon of palatial splendour. Winters would drag by, cold and miserable, and having to spend time in that flat...
The first few days of spring were an annual revelation. If I was on the afternoon shift at the petrol station (2:30pm - 10:30pm) I would often find myself at the beach about 11:00am. This time of year it would be quiet, but the coffee stalls on the seafront would be open. I would sit on the pebbles of the beach, drinking large coffees in plastic cups, smoking roll-ups, and I would euphorically languish in the sun. The sky would always strike me as being a remarkable shade of blue, and the air would taste of all those possibilities that springtimes used to bring. The mornings would pass all too quickly, and I would have to set off for the petrol station.
The streets would taste of sunlight and metal, and there would be something undeniably magical, almost occult, about it all. Some great mystery below the first few days of sunlight in March. Wading through Brighton and Hove to the Old Shoreham Road where I worked, the landscape would change, become mundane with retail parks and industrial estates. Then there would be the shock of the light inside the petrol station - shadowy and dark compared to the brightness of outside. The afternoon shift would begin, and the coffees and paperback books of the beach would seem a lifetime away.
That sense of magick wouldn't quite fade though, even when darkness fell and the rush hour began and the forecourt would be packed full of white vans and office workers heading home. There would be something undeniably different about it all. Premonitions of summer, intimations of the day lengthening extraordinarily. Things would seem deeper, filled to bursting with an odd sense of mystery and intrigue after the drear reign of rainy February.
Even walking home through the crow-like lamp-lit darkness of the Old Shoreham Road felt touched, transfigured by the day too. Even with the returning cold, and the still-bare branches of trees. Something had changed, something had tipped, and you could taste it in the air, something that would taste like the distance, the dark promise of fields on summer nights.