I miss the petrol station days sometimes.
It's all an illusion of course. I wouldn't go back to working in the petrol station again. Days of no money and bad customers, and a horrible flat I hated. Well, for most of it anyway. No, I wouldn't go back there, but I miss some parts of it.
I miss finishing the evening shift at 10:30pm, then that half an hour walk back along the Old Shoreham Road to my flat on Buckingham Street, often with a DVD I had bought before that shift had begun. Getting back was one of the few times when that flat was bearable, cosy after dark, and I could stay up late into the small hours because you never had to be up early after an evening shift.
I miss those Sunday afternoons there when it was dark and quiet and raining. Autumn days slipping into an oddly smoky darkness, and slipping round the back for cigarettes. Just over the fence there was a wasteground (there's a furniture store there now) that used to fascinate me. Lambert and Butler and me staring at the tips of trees like weeds that grew there.
I miss those cold morning walks crossing that bridge up near where I would end up living on Wilbury Crescent. Never any trains that time of the morning. Oh, those days when hungover and still half-drunk I would make my way in to serve the white van drivers their cigarettes and diesel and Daily Stars...
Bright humming fridges.
The blue light that illumed the cigarette racks.
Happily flicking through that days papers.
No, I wouldn't go back those times again. Wouldn't even consider it for a second, but there was something there that isn't here now that I miss.
