As I drew my curtains shut last night, I noticed something in the darkness outside, some kind of commotion. Some movement in the lighted window in the house across the passage, the one that looks across the one storey extension that is the back of Drury's coffee shop. A figure in the window, flailing his arms. Illuminated in the light of my room as I was, I felt suddenly vulnerable and went to switch off the light. In the darkness I went back to the window, to see what was happening. At first I thought there was some kind of domestic argument. A man was swinging his arms about and gesticulating wildly. Then other people joined the scene. There was much laughter and the low thud-thus-thud of music. They appeared to be playing some kind of game. I saw a man in a paper hat, someone else inexpertly holding a cup of wine, or some other dark substance. They were having some kind of house party.
Pleased I had discovered the source of the noise I went to bed. As I lay there listening to the vague sounds of the party (these old houses are very soundproofed it seems) I thought about house parties. I never really got the hang of them... would pretend I would be enjoying them, would even look forward to them, but I was always glad when they were over and I could go to bed or go home. I always found something a little bit threatening about house parties, something shifty and unpredictable. Sections of the house in which the party was held, even well known houses, even your own home, would become off-limits, new kingdoms ruled by strangers, by those friends of friends with their loud laughs and aggressive voices, and you were never sure whose friends of friends they were. I think that's what always unnerves me about house parties, that odd sense of aggression, of chaos about to spill over... which often does happen. Some parties I have attended have left the house in an unbelievable state of utter destruction the next day.
Even the sounds of a house party, like that relatively restrained gathering last night, sound vicious and alarming. All that they're doing I told myself as I fell asleep, is enjoying themselves.
I really must be getting old.
Monday, 7 May 2012
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Stirring in Night-Waters
Yesterday slipped through those rainy gloomy hours with a fluid and conspiratorial air. I walked into town and back, I had a bath, I read for a while, and drew for an even small while. The day was mine and the flat also, though as the afternoon tipped into evening, I realised the flat didn't belong to me but something else.
Something which comes in all flats - and houses - all interiors, when the day has been spent alone and the daylight starts to fail. I love that phrase, as if the coming of night indicates some kind of wrongness rather than the next step in the perfectly natural cycle of things.
The rooms seemed to generate the night - the darkness, a blue the colour of pools and rain and days spent alone, a ghost story colour - seemed to sweep and swim from every room where I was not. If I was in the kitchen, my room seemed to generate the darkness, if I was in my room, then it would be the living room that would be the source of this night-river.
For some reason I was loathe to turn the lights on (aside from the room where I was), even though this would dispel this unsettling feeling of night time flooding the rooms, flooding from the rooms. There was a panicky feeling in the flat too, as if I was not meant to be witness to this. Something stirring in the night-waters.
I was due to meet Em, and I was glad when I stepped into the Mews and shut the door of the flat behind me. I headed off to meet Em, and in the post-rain air, all the houses and sky looked old and dreamy and uncertain too, as if whatever had stirred in the night-waters of the flat had stirred here too.
Something which comes in all flats - and houses - all interiors, when the day has been spent alone and the daylight starts to fail. I love that phrase, as if the coming of night indicates some kind of wrongness rather than the next step in the perfectly natural cycle of things.
The rooms seemed to generate the night - the darkness, a blue the colour of pools and rain and days spent alone, a ghost story colour - seemed to sweep and swim from every room where I was not. If I was in the kitchen, my room seemed to generate the darkness, if I was in my room, then it would be the living room that would be the source of this night-river.
For some reason I was loathe to turn the lights on (aside from the room where I was), even though this would dispel this unsettling feeling of night time flooding the rooms, flooding from the rooms. There was a panicky feeling in the flat too, as if I was not meant to be witness to this. Something stirring in the night-waters.
I was due to meet Em, and I was glad when I stepped into the Mews and shut the door of the flat behind me. I headed off to meet Em, and in the post-rain air, all the houses and sky looked old and dreamy and uncertain too, as if whatever had stirred in the night-waters of the flat had stirred here too.
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Grey and Glee
The sky, cut into neat rectangles by the black lines of the window frames, is a shade of bank holiday weekend grey. A nearly flat shade of no-colour, wet looking and swollen - in places - with lighter streaks of no-colour. A wet and day dreamy colour, cold and desolate and so utterly typical. So typical in fact that it threatens to become a cliche.
Everyone is complaining about 'the overcast weather' and it being symptomatic of 'typical England', whilst at the same time being quite surprised that it is grey and cold. I saw the headline of the Daily Mail warn that the 'cold spell' will 'continue into June' in tones suggesting that this outcome may be only slightly less unnerving than some kind of apocalypse.
I went out this morning to Portland Road for The Guardian. My god, it was cold. That kind of sinking wet cold that seems to creep into your fingers. Bones of old people, arthritic premonitions. The wet pavements had a kind of hypnotic glare to them. The branches of the front garden trees were heavy with blossoms, and the air was thick with their scent, and that fecund smell of late rainy springs.
I came back home and read bits of The Guardian and some fantasy novel I bought yesterday, toyed (and am still toying) with the idea of popping into town to buy Burzum's re-recorded versions of his early songs. Just waiting to sync my i-pod having put on yesterday's Tiamat album on.
I might meander through the churchyard by Tescos on my way into town, past the graves and the street drinkers and wish I could still smoke a cigarette sat on a bench while looking up into that old shadow of a church tower.
This is an M.R.James day, a day for Victorian ghost stories and meandering daydreams whilst staring out of the window, a sleepy midday creeping into a long slow afternoon and a languid half-light evening.
Everyone is complaining about 'the overcast weather' and it being symptomatic of 'typical England', whilst at the same time being quite surprised that it is grey and cold. I saw the headline of the Daily Mail warn that the 'cold spell' will 'continue into June' in tones suggesting that this outcome may be only slightly less unnerving than some kind of apocalypse.
I went out this morning to Portland Road for The Guardian. My god, it was cold. That kind of sinking wet cold that seems to creep into your fingers. Bones of old people, arthritic premonitions. The wet pavements had a kind of hypnotic glare to them. The branches of the front garden trees were heavy with blossoms, and the air was thick with their scent, and that fecund smell of late rainy springs.
I came back home and read bits of The Guardian and some fantasy novel I bought yesterday, toyed (and am still toying) with the idea of popping into town to buy Burzum's re-recorded versions of his early songs. Just waiting to sync my i-pod having put on yesterday's Tiamat album on.
I might meander through the churchyard by Tescos on my way into town, past the graves and the street drinkers and wish I could still smoke a cigarette sat on a bench while looking up into that old shadow of a church tower.
This is an M.R.James day, a day for Victorian ghost stories and meandering daydreams whilst staring out of the window, a sleepy midday creeping into a long slow afternoon and a languid half-light evening.
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