Followed by a Ghost Dog

A day off work yesterday. Another day today.
Summery day again yesterday. When I finally got to leaving the house, I went to George Street, to Asdas, then came back home. Fell asleep on my mattress listening to Porcupine Tree's 'Metanoia'. Continual suspicion over the improvement in my mood since Saturday nadir of gloom (which bizarrely, and for no apparent reason, improved at dusk, and has remained fairly high since).
Saw the Swans at Concorde 2.
Andy and me walked back along the beach - about an hours walk. The wind was up - a cold wind too, but oddly pleasant because of it. Something about walking along the beach at night when there's a breeze. After we passed the swimming pool, the nature of the beach changed. Something desolate and sinister. Not a place I'd liked to be alone. 'When you're on the beach at night and it's windy, it always feels like you're being followed'. Andy says his eyes are so bad that he always sees things flickering in the distance. One of those umbrella-things (closed) over a pub table (or maybe it was a flag) flutters and jars. I keep seeing things too. Shadowy implications of movement further up the promenade. 'This section of the beach is haunted by a white dog following lonely walkers'.
Home. Sleep. Wake. Call in sick.
Not summer today but autumn. Grey skies cover everything, lending this room hazy, dream-like feel. Al texts me about walking to Portslade through the rain listening to Current 93.
The idea appeals.

So Light So Late

Yesterday.
Summery-ness continues. I only leave the house once in the afternoon - to go to Sainsburys. Not one trace of spring left now, and I cannot believe that it is still winter. One of those things about growing older - the more you appreciate time, the less of it there seems to be.
Pub quiz last night; Mark, Pete, Andy. We come second out of six teams. Cosy dark Caroline of Brunswixk. Same cramped toilet full of goth-graffitti and pseudo-Latin black metal incantations. Light when we go in. So light so late these days. Heading toward midsummer.
Lift there and back from Mark.
Almost straight to sleep.
Don't remember dreaming.

First Afternoon of Summer

I met Sarah for a coffee after yesterday's entry. Warm summery air. Costa in the North Laine full of too much noise; clanking caffeine machines and squealy pre-teens. Slow talk with Sarah, stretched over an hour or so.
Headed down Pavilion Gardens afterwards with the Guardian. Sat and flicked through the Review (a not very good article on Donna Tartt) and pondered whether to join Sarah / Caution / Anwen in the pub that afternoon. Sudden swirl of anxiety. Couldn't imagine entering the pub. Decided to go home, feeling somewhat melancholy.
Tried to catch the bus home. Bus driver didn't have change for a £5:00 note (a single fare is £2:40). Took my £5 back and decided to walk home instead.
Afternoon runs on. Melancholy deepens to something darker. Finish a book I'm reading on notorious Gloucester serial killers Fred and Rose West. Find an old diary from 1999. Last desperate days in Worcester, then that summer that followed, full of apocalypse and depression and absence. Too many parallels to be drawn with now. 27 them, 42 now, and still some things seem to stay the same.
Summery twilight, wood pigeons, and, again, I'm walking through someone else's carnival. Mood lifts as night fall - always the same with depression. Talk about this with Andy when he gets home from work - heard this from other sources too. Wonder why, but certainly true. Depression is worse during daylight hours.
Talk to Emily.
Spend a good few hours working on a comic strip memoir of my time in Worcester. Have two pages done now. Go to sleep at about 2:30am. Wake up this morning at 9:00am.
First afternoon of summer now.