It's an awful, awful day out there. A thick white layer of glaring cloud has covered the sky (it was vaguely sunny when I walked in this morning, an eternity ago now), and since lunchtime there has been a steady stream of tedious rain. Rain entirely without drama or interest. A light and soaking sheen. It seems to have robbed the day of everything noteworthy or interesting or meaningful.
Sat in the office in the last hour of work. The yellow glow of the overhead lights is too glaring and thick – succeeds in illuminating nothing. The temperature in here is sickly and warm, makes me feel exhausted and mildly ill.
Look outside – awful autumnal gloom. People move about the call centre, speak with voices that sound too sharp and full of brightness.
It’s been a tiring month – some good – the trip to Poland – and some bad – Nan dying, not going to Bruges, work becoming intolerable. I suppose it’s all catching up with me now.
I suppose if the weather were brighter, and full of that strange electric mystery of most May days (at least those May days in memory anyway) I suppose I mightbe feeling less that life is one big, empty cul-de-sac I can’t get out of (a labyrinth of knee high walls and neglected gardens in this suburban labyrinth of my mind).
I went to pay the council tax in the post office today. The man behind the counter looked at the ragged bill I handed him with disdain; ‘this has to last youanother year!’ he joked. I’m not sure how the bill has got so ragged. This is only the second month of paying it. It has to last us until January 2014…
2014. What an odd year that sounds. Full of angles and wood. I think it’s the fault of the ‘4’ at the end, all folded in on itself. Something pleasing ramshackle about the number ‘4’. It’s always reminded me of a ramshackle jungle hut, mixed with a kind ‘cute pylon’ feel. That’s synaesthesia for you I suppose.
Fifteen minutes till I finish work. Through the slats of the blind over all the windows in the call centre, the evening still seems insufferable and cold. Not looking forward to the walk home (shall I take the bus?) – except I have a strange urge to visit twilight in St Annes Well park. Rainy days are made somewhat more tolerable by sheltering under trees in a slowly darkening park (though what I would do now to experience this too-early dusk in the middle of a forest!).
