Labyrinth under Grey Skies

Sat in an internet cafe down Western Road, just round the corner from where I used to live in the bedsit on Brunswick Place. Internet connection down at home, so am forced to use (again) the joys of the internet cafe... Actually this one is quite nice. I used to come here quite a lot over the late summer / early autumn of 2010. There is some soft easy listening jazz in the background. A man from Russia is at the counter talking with the man there about something wrong with his phone. A couple of girls - maybe Mediterranean - sit in a corner by the window, talking quickly with hushed urgent voices. Actually, I think it may be a girl and a man - not two girls - my description is going on sound only. I sit and face the wall.
It is a little warm in here, but outside it is horrible. Gloomy thick rain. Slow drops. No-one can remember the colour of the sky, or what it is like being hot. Summer is an urban legend people have given up believing in. The sound of the vehicles passing by sound wet; tyres on the damp road, slick-wheel curve, a sound like all those headache-y Sunday afternoons when you're a kid.
The man at the counter counts out money. The man taking the money is jovial and loud. He laughs raucously, and joins the group in the corner. They leave. Out into the summer-rainy street and the cafe is quiet again).
I tried going for an evening walk last night, but that same summer edginess came down - even though I had elected to walk along the seafront road instead of the panicky length of the Old Shoreham Road. The road along the seafront is odd - felt quite unlike Brighton, quite unlike England really, though what country it felt like escaped me, somewhere ragged and sinking into an odd obscurity. There was a certain building there that fascinated me, somewhere vast and overwhelming but also oddly hidden, whose purpose remains unknown - though I think it may be some kind of hotel. I approached it from the back, and the sight both fascinated and unnerved me. A labyrinth of fire escape ladders and pipes, myriad blank windows, and the stone of the building was blackened, as if infected by some industrial haunting. It was the rooms of this building that so unnerved me, or at least certain of these rooms. The rooms in question seemed to be some kind of extensions to the main building - there were no adjoining rooms to the left or right. Just a kind of 'pillar' attached to the main building. The top rooms of these 'pillars' (the only ones I really noticed) would be even more isolated - no one above either, capsules that seemed to hang there. Couldn't imagine the rooms within, and thought suddenly something terrifying happened here. I think it was the silhouette of the building against the twilight-darkening sky that did it, and I felt on the edges of some unstable country. Walked quickly past a man in front of me who rolled his shoulders in a casual aggressive manner. He stumbled slightly as I walked past. Sunday night walks where everything seems wrong. I hope they'll fade with the end of summer.
When I got home - and after ringing Emily - I spoke with Andy for a while. He had just finished two weeks off work (and is due back today actually) and he was heavy with that Sunday night gloom that precedes the first day back at work after any period of absence. 'I was looking out of the window as it got dark' he said 'looking at all the roofs and it was just like autumn'.
There was a long programme on about gypsy / traveller bare knuckle fighting. This was both haunting and interesting; feuds between families stretching on over decades, blood and bouts lasting hours, cries of 'fair fights!' and 'no biting! no biting!'. There was much documentary footage. The fights took place in an odd dream-like landscape - an England of heavy grey skies, estates of one block chalets that felt -somehow- oddly American suburban - and in the clearings of forests. Oh those clearings. Sudden jolt of something, pricked with some memory. It was a memory of a dream. An old, old dream that I don't remember much of, but is one of those dreams that stays with you forever. The fighting bouts on the television seemed to be actually be filmed from the dream - or at least on those memories of the dream.
Anyway, the dream concerned itself with a gypsy fighting bout. There had been a long rivalry between the two fighters, big men who, in the dream, worked on a fairground. There had been fights between the men before, but this came to a head, and they met in a forest clearing late at night to finally settle their differences. There was no audience (the only real difference between the documentary and the dream) and the two men fought for hours. There was an odd twist to this dream too, as the two men managed to kill each other simultaneously . No-one knew where they were, so their bodies were never found, and left lying on the leafy ground of the clearing. I had no 'part' in the dream, and was some kind of omniscient observer - not so much 'watching a film' but alomst being the film. If that makes sense. Anyhow the dream is well over twenty five years old.
Talking of dreams, I shall be back in Worcester later this week. With Em's help I'll hopefully be able to photograph one of the images of my dreams; being at the base of London Road hill as it gets dark and walking up. I would post the photograph on here, but with no internet access at home, the as -yet-untaken photograph might remain un-uploaded for a while yet.