Chimney Country

Head south to Christmas, to chimney-country, to lands under gray skies the shade of white and afternoon sleep, and I feel those nowhere days with their promises of ghost stories. Lying in bed at night and listening to the wind rattle over imagined moors, black lanes and dreaming hills.
Here in the just-before-twilight of December, a strange sense of something. Last night in the Metropole Hotel, at the Value Awards dinner, and in the bustle of the great hall, it feels like this has all happened decades before. Here we are in the 1930s, being remembered in the impossible year of 2012.
Took hours to walk back along the sea front. Red wine, white wine, water, lager. Wasn't sick on the beach like I was after the Awards dinner last year. Woke up this year with no hangover, just tired, and words I reach for but can't grasp fading now in the cool and comforting evening.