Kidderminster at Twilight

Went with Dad to Kidderminster yesterday to pick up the last of their Christmas shopping (not my Christmas shopping - I shall be returning to Brighton, flooded tracks permitting tomorrow night).
The last time I was at Kidderminster was with Em in May of last year, before them would have been over the winter of 1993 / 1994. After a very busy Morrisons we headed to the high street, which was bustling too. Dad went to pick up Mum's prescription. I went to WHSmith's to buy a prog rock magazine then waited for Dad on the steps of some building, slightly unnerved by teenage shenanigans about me. When I met Dad we went for a coffee and watched the late afternoon pass by outside - an odd place Kidderminster - well, not odd, just not Brighton. The place was thronged with teenagers and families, and it didn't look like there was a graphic designer (thankfully) amongst them.
The town is littered with old carpet factories - now mostly turned into retail outlets - and roundabouts. I was surprised at how busy it all was; people moving quick through the growing twilight, walking with ease the labyrinth of subways and footbridge, side passage and back street. This is a place where people live out their lives, born, grow old, have families and die. Depressing in one way but oddly comforting in another. I imagine any teenager here would yearn to escape their red brick incarceration - move to somewhere exciting -like Brighton perhaps. Kidderminster has an old and broken soul, on the edges of disintegration, but Brighton sometimes seems so plastic - trendy without depth, without a soul - at least any of note. A place for holidaymakers and that short period in every lifetime when anything you dream of might still be possible. After the holidays are over though or you hit your thirties, Brighton might seem less appealing... I wouldn't want to live anywhere else though... or maybe I would, but I have no reason to...
Leaving Kidderminster in the full throes of twilight. Something vast about the skies up here, great grey things flung from horizon to horizon, the land and buildings all flat, supplicants before unknowable, impeachable gods. The wet dusk, impressive in its sobriety, bought resonances of old Christmases spent here in the Midlands, when my parents lived at Bretforton (the Christmases of 1993, 1994, 1995) and of course my own three Christmases in Worcester (1996, 1997, 1998).
Particularly the Christmas of 1997.
A dark December that one - a 'relationship' gone bad, and the early gloom of that December darkening into crisis as Christmas approached. Nothing serious of course (nothing and everything is serious though when you're 25) - just that back - forth - push - pull of university-era relationships. I remember the shared house I lived in on 136 London Road slowly shedding its occupants for trips to familial homes till there was only Al, Ruth and myself left. Ruth didn't live there, but she spent enough time there to qualify as some phantasmal resident. I remember the preparations for Ruth's birthday party at the beginning of December - feeling later in the month that it was - trips into town with Sal to buy flowers and presents (I bought her Portishead's second album) - I don't remember anything about the party itself though.
We drove out of town as night fell - though this night seemed to rise from the ground, from the parks I remembered (maybe) from childhood visits, from under red brick viaduct bridges and from the shadows cast by street lamps.
By the time we got back to Cleobury Mortimer, it was night.
Midwinter days, a few sickly hours of pale washed out daylight and then darkness again, - a phrase I used in something years ago.
Ah well.
Days start getting longer from now on, even though it seems that these nights will last forever.