An Early Deep Summer

Deep summer.
Normally comes in August, that feeling that there is no other season but summer, no spring, no winter, just that timeless feeling of being caught in one season. Swimming in a lake rather than swept down spring streams and autumn islands.
Seems to have come early this year, as soon as waking in the morning, that metallic caress of heat, that bright light pushing through the curtains, the lethargy of afternoons sat in the sun and longing for shade, but not being bothered to move.
Having said that there was a sea fog last night. We took a walk on the beach at twilight, the horizon and sea obscured by a grey / white bank of nothing, the tops of buildings lifting into threads of white, licking at concrete, worrying windows.
Stood on the bandstand for a while, watched the fires lit on the stones, the street lamps coming on, and Brighton, behind us, pulsing like the arteries of some strange heart.
When I woke up this morning, the outside seemed different, the light brighter and clearer, fresher. I thought it felt autumnal, but when I slipped out onto her balcony to have a cigarette, no... the heat was more enveloping than ever. Summer-possessed, even in the night, the body still remembers heat, metal-touched, a languid sinking, a falling and a longing to slip under the surface and breathe underwater.
Fragments and dreams. A haunted house with a hidden second stairway, the trees growing too close to the windows of the house. Shade-haunted rooms hiding ghosts and dark histories.
Off to sign on again tomorrow. I am looking forward to the walk back, for the inevitable break in Hove Cemetery, and lying under those trees by the silent railway line.
July tomorrow? Already?
But it seems like summer is forever, stretching on without ending. Time-lost yet ticking on.
Back home now.
There are footsteps in this house of bedsits, and their echoes taste of dust and afternoons spent drowsing in Meditterenean houses.
The sea lapping shores, the seagull-calls.
Even the cars passing by on the road below sound like tides.

The King of Stations

I only saw the King of Stations once, for what must have been 20 seconds, maybe less.
It was back in the February of 1997, when I was in my first year at Worcester University. It was a February, and I had caught the train down to Crawley to visit a friend. I remember the music I was listening to ('Brave Murder Day' by Katatonia) and the grey weather too; vast banks of undulating cloud that allowed no blue to seep through. Rain against carriage glass. Falling into the fragmented rhythms of train-sleep, slight dreams corresponding to the somehow ancient sound of wheels against metal. I remember changing at Reading Station, smoking a quick cigarette on the platform. I somehow ended up having to change at Redhill. It was either just before or just after Redhill that I saw the King of Stations.
The train had slowed, and was coasting through the Sussex countryside. Out of the window I saw a dilapidated manor. Grey stone. Windows blank as sleep, hidden behind trees and bushes. I was immediately interested, fascinated as I am by old houses lost in obscure countryside.
After the train had passed by the manor, the gardens of the manor were revealed, in a similarily dreaming and decaying state. The garden was sloped, statues and fountains, bare trees lining the sides of the garden. Ragged hedges and deep shadows. Shallow walls splitting the slopes. A path ran down the centre of the gardens, and it was down this path that walked the King of Stations.
The King of Stations was a dog. Not a particularly sinister looking dog, in fact it was a 'Lassie' style sheepdog, looking well groomed and healthy, not doing anything particularly alarming, just walking.
My blood ran cold, and I am still unable to explain why.
Maybe there was something in the way the dog was walking, a slow, deliberate, almost arrogant tread. Padding down the steps of the path. It looked like it was going somewhere, had some previously arranged appointment. I couldn't see where it was going; the path and the gardens fell below the line of the railway track. I had some sudden nightmare image of the train stopping at an unnamed station, and the path the dog was walking would loop under the railway line and onto the platform, and the doors would open and the dog would step onto the train.
'The King of Stations' I thought with a strange uncertainty.
The dog continued walking. That same slow, somehow malevolent tread. It didn't stop to engage in the usual canine pursuits, didn't sniff about, didn't look around.
I remember the skies in the distance, the wet February skies, and the sudden splashing of raindrops on the window startling me.
The train moved on and I never saw the King of Stations again.
I have no idea why the sight of a dog walking through an expansive garden had such an effect on me. I have often wandered on it these last 13 years. It was like seeing an image in a nightmare, that alarming realisation that something is inextricably and indescribably wrong, as if the dog had been walking on its hindlegs, or it hadn't been a dog, but was a giant impossible insect, jagged spider walk, centipede segments. A pincer-shaped clattering. Claws on stone.
Nightmares in February.
I still wonder though, where the King of Stations was so obviously heading toward, and of it's previously arranged appointment, and with whom, and why.
Unanswered questions of course.
After all, it was only a dog, walking through a slightly unkempt garden on a gloomy February day.
Nothing more.

Longing for Autumn

Lying on the grass in Pavilion Gardens heat, thinking of unwritten books and the quiet corners of unknown cities.
Men in pubs waiting for the football, and I scan the shelves of second hand books in charity shops.
Green tables and instant coffees, old women smoking cigarettes and foreign students easing into midday sleep.
Fragments of the sea, glass-liquid slashes between buildings.
Autumn seems so far away here, and yet I feel it, biding its time down curving alleys no-one walks, in the unrented backrooms of bedsit houses, among the dust and unslept-in beds covered with a sheet and nothing more.
Windows remember. Windows remember the raindrops against their panes in quiet October mornings, where the air smells of smoke and memories.
And I remember too, and in this midsummer heat, I feel autumn drawing near.

To Our Once and Precious Watch

After succesfully finding the Kafka / Orwell-esque 'Department of Work and Pensions', I headed back from Portslade into Brighton again. Except I didn't quite make it. I walked back along the Old Shoreham Road, an unreal summers day; sunlight shafts on car-metal and tarmac, and this far from the sea, even the seagulls were silent.
I slipped off of the Old Shoreham Road and into Hove Cemetery, a place I discovered a few weeks ago when returning from the job centre.
Something restful about churchyards, I don't know why. I think, all those farewells, they should leave a trace of melancholy behind. Rarely so. Instead there is a kind of serene and timeless peace about such places.
Hove Cemetery is far larger than I had thought. Closely packed gravestones crowd winding paths. A small church rises up in the centre of this quiet geography, church spire like some aerial picking up quiet transmissions. Silent transitions. Slipping from waking into sleep.
I flickered over memorials, misreading some here and there; 'to our once and precious watch'. I didn't look back to read what the inscription really was.
I wondered what their precious vigil was meant to watch out for.
Who removes the heads of angels in churchyards? Strange and briefly glanced upon mysteries. An angel actually with a head resting sanguine on a tomb. William Morris? Is that you? -No of course not... Pre-Raphaelite doppelgangers. Shadow painters and same-named men lost in the same sleep.
The tall closely packed tombs set up a kind of doppler effect. An optical illusion. Out of the corner of my eyes it felt like someone walked with me. Churchyard rhythm, graveyard canter. A dog between the stones, a cemetery crow, and the wind through the leaves like the crashing of waves against a shoreline bordering sleep.
I came to the quietest corner of the graveyard, sat on the grass beside an unsafe bench. Watched conifer trees drop cones in the breeze, a scattering of them like snowflake-coins, precise and mathematical design. Reminded me of Scotland. I took out my sketchbook and drew without thinking; a woman holding the image of a figure, perhaps herself, the head of this effigy, or ghost, thrown back in ecstasy. A wild euphoria, like the man and woman kissing behind her, slipping into a background of trees, a hill of wild grass and rumoured rivers.
It was so beautiful in the churchyard, so peaceful, and that peace laced through with a current of something mysterious and unnameable. No time and all time. Yesterdays not mine, memories of things never experienced. A kind of deja-vu, but I've been here before.
Music on my headphones; the Swans, Kate Bush, Fields of the Nephilim. I stayed for hours, thought of Emily and this summer, and finally, as the clock ticked up toward evening, I headed home.
Except I didn't quite make it. St Anns Well Gardens... so I stayed there for a while, in the long drawn out evening sun, watching the pale leaves of poplar trees in the breeze, watched dogs rush victorious through bushes, and wondered what it would be like to be a squirrel with the freedom of all the branches to be lost in.
I finally headed home, got back about half an hour ago.
I think of the churchyard peaceably drifting into night, that place where the street lights grow dim, and even clocks grow lazy.

Petrol Station Tales 4: Solving the Shadow

Inevitably, given my interest in ghost stories, and the evening shifts I would regularly work at the petrol station, there would be a time when we began to be convinced that the petrol station was haunted.
I think this was probably over the summer of 2005, in the 'mid-period' of my time span there. It would begin late at night, in the last hour of the shift (9:30 - 10:30pm) and would take the form of a kind of awareness of a certain part of the shop-interior. As light fell from the day outside, there would be a barely acknowledged sensation of someone standing by the pizza-freezers (as we called them, they also contained frozen dinners, overpriced ice-cream tubs etc.) As twilight fell to full night outside, this barely acknowledged sensation would turn into fully fledged conviction. I would be serving customers at the customers, and be convinced there would be someone standing there, watching me. When I had the chance to look properly, there would be no-one there. Sometimes, out of the corner of an eye, it was almost possible to see the form of a figure there, a small human shaped shadow. An awareness of something that shouldn't be there, a darkness delineated under fluorescent strip lighting. A humming in the petrol station silence.
It really was rather eerie.
Wheares, after I had closed up the garage, I might linger for half an hour having a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper, now, when the garage would shut, I would collect my things and flee. In the darkened petrol station, the outside world seemed a million miles away, safe and bright, and far, far away from this unpleasant sensation that wasn't there a few months before.
In the reaches of my overactive imagination, I would give form to this shadow. I imagined it as a small woman, wrapped in a cloak, head hidden by a hood. Awful, staring eyes. I would imagine her gliding from the stock room when I went to turn off the power to the pumps. Would imagine her as I walked across the forecour staring at me from the night-still interior of the shop.
I was both alarmed and pleased when other people began to notice this phenomena too. Some of the part-timers said that they felt there was someone in the shop when no-one was there, and every person who worked the evening shift felt there was someone standing amongst the empty aisles, always in the same place, by the pizza-freezers...
One day, the manager was over the by the pizza-freezers. He said that he was replacing one of the interior light bulbs, which had burned out a few months before.
Then, that night... No more uncomfortable feeling of being watched. No more shadow. No more panicky need to flee the petrol station as soon as it was locked up.
It turned out that our haunting was no more than a broken light bulb.
It barely made any difference that light bulb. The freezer was a bit darker and that was all, but somehow, the subconscious had picked up on this new patch of barely perceptible darkness and had identified it as a threat. This threat, which had no basis in any real threat, had transformed itself into a supernatural incursion. Sick building syndrome. Petrol station panic attack. Nothing there but our own fears flung at a patch of shadow where we were not used to there being a shadow.
I was elated.
Elated not so much at the thought of the petrol station not being haunted, but the fact that a haunting had been solved. Fascinating too, and concurred with what I had thought that many haunted buildings may well be the result of bad angles, bad lighting, bad architecture. An unfortunate georgraphy, 'here be monsters', written on the maps of rooms.
A haunted cartography.
There were no more reports of being watched at the end of the evening shift, and I began to linger more for post-work coffees and attempt to finish the crossword in the Independent. I have a similar story with a vanishing black dog on a bridge which turned out to have a rational explanation too, but thats a story for another time, and despite the dog not turning out to be a hellhound, but a rather friendly shaggy mongrel, there was a strange coincidence involved, but I'll get round to that story another day...

Stood in front of the pizza-fridges on a return trip to the petrol station back in December of 2008

A Short Ghost Story for the Ox-Hours

We're getting close to the ox-hours now. Just been reading ghost stories on the Fortean Times message board, and as its the small hours, thought I'd post a quick one before I go to sleep...

I visited York way back in the January of 2003. I went to a pub one night with a friend. After purchasing a pint from the bar, I walked into the front area, a large room with a number of tables. I was aware of various people in the room; a young couple, two old men playing chess, a group of young men by the window, a Victorian looking girl by the fire-
That wasn't right.
I looked up. There was no-one by the fire. I had only glimpsed her from the corner of my eye. I sat down with my friend and continued drinking, feeling pleasantly eerie, though knowing that it was probably my imagination. A chance conjunction of angles and shadows that gathered together in the corner of my eye.
I probably wouldn't have thought anything more about it, but that night, in another pub, I got talking to a girl who was interested in paranormal phenomena. I told her the name of the pub I had been in, and she said it was very haunted. One of the ghosts was a Victorian girl seen by the fire in the front room...

Coincidence probably, but still...

Petrol Station Tales 3: More True Crime Stories

There used to be a guy who always came into the petrol station early on in the morning, always before 7am. Very cool looking; smart suit, a trilby hat. Indeterminate age, he could have been any age between 20 and 40. He reminded me of an archetypal old blues musician, some ghost from a Missisipi 1930s summer... He would always buy about £50 worth of phone cards. One morning he came in with another guy, whom he introduced as one of his 'work associates'. Dressed in the same slightly old-fashioned way, he also displayed the original man's elegant air. Mike once asked him what his job was, and he said he was a professional gambler... After a few months of coming in, we got a phone call from the police, who told us that if he came in the shop, don't act suspiciously, don't say anything to him and inform them immediately, as it turned out he was raising funds for terrorist organisations... He came in once more, and then never again. i still sometimes wonder what happened to him.

We called them the Kray twins. They lived across the road, with a number of other brothers. They must have been only about 16 or so. Their father who lived with them was a well known local rascal who was always complaining about the noise at the petrol station, and was rumoured to be involved in the petty crime scene in Hove, whatever that might have consisted of. The Kray Twins were the worst though. Always coming into the garage and trying to steal things, anything really; bottles of coke, crisps, coffee... One night I had locked up the garage but had not locked up the temporary barbecues outside. A man from across the road came over and said he had called the police as he had seen the Kray twins stealing a number of them. God knows what they wanted with twenty disposable barbecues. The man who had called the police was a neighbour of the Krays had had a long running feud with them. The delight in his face was evident at the thought of them getting into trouble. As I was on a date that night, I just wanted to go, and hoped to leave before the police arrived. Just as I was locking the security gate over the door, three police cars turned up and a van. I saw the handcuffed Kray twins being bundled into the back of a van. I had to go down the police station and be interviewed. They were both charged with burglary though heard nothing after that. Maybe they both pleaded guilty.
Sometime after that, the car of the man who had called the police was set on fire. He used to park it around the back of the station, and sometime after that, the father of the Krays was found badly beaten in his house. Shortly afterwards the father was evicted. An odd series of events, and one that makes me think of a pattern...

The police were quite often at the garage, when people drove away without paying ('bilkers' they were called), when fights kicked off in the forecourt, when drunk people wondered about the shop threatening customers. One time, somebody I worked with locked a thief in the shop, but he tried to smash the glass by throwing a bin at it, so she had to let him go. We were often threatened. People (when not being able to pay for the petrol and discovering that we took this quite seriously) would always threaten to 'come back for you when the station is closed'. None of them ever did. After a while, the shouted threats as they left the station (always as they left) fell on deaf ears, and were usually greeted with laughter from us.

One time, the manager told us that there was a Pepperami thief. Empty Pepperami packets were always found in the aisles, almost every week. Mike and myself decided to catch this threatening miscreant. It was Mike who caught the culprit. he had been at the till one day, and saw the Pepperamis fluttering on the shelf, like 'trees in a breeze' he said. He went around the shelf and found a young boy, about ten years old, munching away on Pepperamis... He burst into tears, and Mike let him go, somewhat amused by this unexpected encounter with one of Hove's most feared criminals...

We would always be afraid of 'The Ginger Gang' so called because their leader was, well, ginger, and had the name of Sandy. A group of about four or five lads. They would appear seemingly out of nowhere, and in a chaos of activity would descend on the shop, stealing DVDs, videos, cheap computer games... This hurricane would last about five minutes or so and then they would leave as quickly as they had arrived. At some point one of them had bought a van, and now the van would appear out of nowhere, by the air and hoover machine that never seemed to work. Now they would come in and steal car care equipment and oil. Eventually they got banned from the shop. One time, after their banning they came into the station. I told them they were banned.' But I'm not doing anything' Sandy said, before proceeding to contradict himself with 'Right we're going to nick stuff!.' One of them threatened to cut my face. It was like being a teacher in a bad school in a dismal part of town. I picked up the phone to call the police which led to more frenzied activity by the Ginger Gang. One of them, menacingly, threw a packet of sponges at me.
They all then ran away, got into their van and vanished. I never saw them again, but heard they later ended up in prison on various petty charges.

Ah, the joy of meeting the British public while working in a petrol station...

Petrol Station Tales 2: The Secret Places of Dawn

After I had been working at the petrol station for a while, I discovered that a bus ran from outside of my house to Hove railway station, five minutes away from where I worked. On Sunday mornings there were no buses however, and I would regularly walk the hour or so into work.
I would leave the house at 5:30am, armed with my walkman and tapes ('Utopia AD' by The Black League and 'Novembrine Waltz' by Novembre were then-current favourites.) Still half asleep, I would walk through the pre-dawn blackness. Often it would be raining, certainly bleak and cold weather, but I found something quite hypnotic about that walk. The streets were silent; no cars, no people. Down Edward Street, where I would pass a shop selling autographs of celebrities (a faded photograph of Joanna Lumley, chemical and paper-stare luminous and ghostly) cross the Old Steine, where the ornate fountain seemed like a remnant imposter from some lost manor, then I would cut through the centre of town before the final half hour long walk along the Old Shoreham Road.
Houses as dark as a Blitz-era blackout, the vast and empty space of Hove Recreation ground... I would imagine figures in there watching me. Melancholy spirits watching this usurper pass by in their time. On the other side of a stone wall that towered over me, a twisted wood, crammed with ancient trees, squatting over a darkness I could only ever imagine.
These were the secret places of dawn, fragments of forgotten places in forgotten times. I wouldn't -and didn't- think twice about them when I passed by in bright daylight. In that pre-dawn darkness though, they seemed to thrum with a haunted resonance. Echoes of places that existed only in the dying hours of street light. I would imagine dreamers in houses, stirring against the rain at their windows. I would think of my friends, all asleep, in that land far, far away from where I was.
In that odd loneliness, there was some solace, in hese secret places that I became a part of.

Petrol Station Tales 1: Early Shifts and Crime

No-one comes to work as a petrol station sales assistant voluntarily. Badly paid, unsociable hours, sometimes dangerous. Desperation and convenience are the usual suspects in bringing someone to such places, and after six months of unemployment, and with a promise to myself that it would just 'tide me over for six months', and after a short cursory interview, on a bleak January day in the January of 2002, I turned up for my first shift.
I ended up staying for five and a half years.
I was desperate for money (I couldn't claim housing benefit for some reason) and as it would just 'tide me over' (how those words haunted me) it would suffice until a 'proper job' came up.
The petrol station, a Shell station, was in the far reaches of Hove, next to the Goldstone Retail Park, which used to be the football stadium. Set on the Old Shoreham Road, always busy, and with labyrinthine complexes of industrial estates scattered around, there was no shortage of customers.
For some reason, I wore a suit on my first day. I was introduced to Mike, a 21 year old, who had worked there for six months. (Six months I thought! No way would I be there that long!) He would oversee my first shift. About halfway through my first shift he said 'well, you've not shut the petrol station down, so you're doing okay'.
It wasn't a 24 hour petrol station. We worked two shifts, from 6:30am - 2:30pm and from 2:30pm - 10:30pm.
The first time I was left alone for an evening shift, I locked up the petrol station and went to the toilet. After returning I carried on and thought all was normal, until somebody asked for a phone card. Reaching under the counter I was horrified to see that the phone card box had gone... I hadn't locked the station up properly, and somebody had gotten in and stolen them. The manager seemed okay about it, and told me that it was his fault for not showing me how to lock up properly.
Shortly after this, on a Sunday lunchtime, the assistant manager, a taciturn man with a moustache I had nicknamed 'Silent Bob', seemed in an unusually taciturn and morose mood. He left at lunchtime, and asked me for a lighter as he left, which he didn't pay for. I thought this a bit strange, but no more about it, until his wife started ringing, asking him where he was (she also worked there as well). No-one came to take over from me for the afternoon shift, and the manager eventually turned up, and it transpired that Silent Bob had disappeared with the weekends taking, about £6000 all together.
No-one knew where he had gone. All very suspicious, particularly as his wife handed in her resignation that day. The only people left working there now was Mike, the manager and myself. Another assistant was employed, a young gay man, camp as could only be in Brighton. He was there about a week, when it transpired that he too had vanished with £600 in cash.
I think I worked 19 days in a row without a break. It was a strange time. Rain and gray days. I would wake up at 5:00am, and either the manager would give me a lift or I would catch the bus from the bottom of my road. I remember being on that bus in those black and unfriendly mornings. The faces of other passengers drawn in cold morning-shock. From Brighton centre I would walk the last half hour to the station itself (I would later discover there was a bus that ran straight from where I was living at the time to just five minutes around the corner.)
Morning rituals. Get the papers out. Get the fire extinguishers out. Load up the tills. Turn the petrol station on. Then, finally a heavily sugared coffee. For the first 30 minutes it was fairly quiet. The odd car. The odd van. By the time the manager got in, about 7:30, there would be a steady stream of traffic.
That time in the mornings our custom usually consisted of white van men. Noisy characters who bought the Sport and the Star, and talked about football with cockney accents and a cheeriness that was somehow incongruous with it still being dark outside. As 9:00am approached, office workers would start coming in. Neat and tidy, still half-asleep. There was something gleeful about the fact that I was nearly halfway through my day. Then the late-teenagers came who worked at the retail park next door. It never really stopped until I finished the early shifts at 2:30pm. Exhausted and my brain feeling frazzled from the endless line of customers (not helped by the period of depression I was then in), the only break I would get was having a cigarette behind the station, next to the car wash. I would smoke two cigarettes in a row, watch the grey skies and the rain, and long for the afternoon, when I could return home and fall asleep on the sofa in my room (so much more comfortable than my bed) until evening.
Gradually things calmed down though, and the chaos of police, who always seemed to be at the station those first few months, faded away. There was a new assistant manager, and other assistants (who never seemed to stay for long). A shift pattern was adopted. we would do two early shifts, then two late shifts, then have two days off. We had one full weekend off in every six weeks.
Things settled down, and the next five years began.
I got on well with the management, who were both a few years younger than me, and even better with Mike. During the evening shifts, I would take in a sketchbook and would quite happily draw between customers. A small stereo was purchased by the management, and when I was alone I would listen to my own music.
I still didn't intend to stay more than six months, but after six months of unemployment, the regular money (little as it was) was nice, and the routine did me good I think.
And sometimes, sometimes I even get nostalgic for it.

Houses in the Kingdom of Sleep

I left her house at 4:00am. The sky was lightening, seagull song and the owners of the all-night shops putting yesterdays newspapers out to be collected. I got home and fell onto my sofa, where I prefer to sleep these days, and the next thing I knew it was evening. 5:30pm to be precise. I was only slightly hungover, but incredibly tired. After two glasses of water I fell back into sleep again. I must have needed it for the next thing I knew it was dark. I checked the time. 5:00am. I slumbered and listened to the driving rain outside.
Strange dreams. My grandfather's house in Stone. Holiday memories of, in the dream, visiting a sunlit spinney in the middle of empty fields. Memories of other houses that existed only in the dream world. A house my parents lived in, set in a valley. Wild grasses and a timeless ancient feeling. 'A forgotten house' I said to myself in the dream. Another dream of leaving Brighton, having to go back north again. The dreams left me with a sense of odd poignancy, a feeling of something experienced then lost, remembered and forgotten again.
Clear post-rain air today, a light mask hiding the summer that threatens to return. I hear a man speak loudly in a foreign language and the ever present language of seagulls soaring over the city.

A Strangely Welcome Summer

After dull, grey yesterday and last night's dream about a dark attic hiding a secret stairway, I woke this morning to hazy sun and a heavy langorous heat. Wondered into town early afternoon to meet Sarah for a coffee in the Pavilion Gardens. Saw her new painting in the studio which I absolutely love; a grey and red piece that felt like a winters afternoon fading towards twilight. can't wait to see it finished.
Sarah left for the studio while I stayed in the park, and finally got around to starting a drawing, the first time I've picked up a pen since losing my job nearly three weeks ago.
One of the great pleasures in life is drawing outside. I was quite content, listening to the unseen sitar playing, watching the jugglers and the pigeons, pretending not to be disturbed by laughing children chasing the aforementioned pigeons.
The shadows crept over the grass though, and the chill drove me to the beach where the evening sun was still evident. Another coffee followed at the Meeting Place cafe. I sat on one of the green tables and watched the sea. A serene sea today, almost completely still, just a few vague ripples, undulating undercurrents, some vast serpent beneath the grey green waters.
Out on the horizon there was a fishing boat. I watched it for a while, and the scattering of seagulls following its lazy path.
I love the sea. It is so certain of itself. Moon mirrors. Timeless rhythm. A back-and-forth that promises forever.
The sea has always been here, and long after I'm gone, it will still be.
There was a kind of peace in that thought, and I walked home.
This is a strange, and perhaps, welcome summer.

The Kindness of People

Meet Sarah on Friday at the bottom of my road. Hot sun and June announcing that summer is here. Walk into town with her. We stop and talk to the Big Issue seller outside of HMV. When she hears of Sarah and mine's money woes she offers us vouchers for free coffee at Greggs. Her kindness was quite staggering. It is interesting that those who have the least are quite often the ones most willing to share what they have.
Meet Jen in the Pavilion Gardens after I leave Sarah. Coffee and tarot cards. A man practises tai-chi in the shadow of the Brighton Pavilion. Great Indian shaped globes and domes and spires. Fluid body movement mirroring architecture.
Down the beach for evening. An impromptu barbecue. Afterwards end up in the pub with Flo (My landlord from years ago. Flo is a nickname. His real is Paul) who buys me drinks all night. Again, the kindness of the people...
Saturday update my cv. Joe comes down for a last weekend in Brighton before he leaves for Poland on the 17th. End up in the Basketmakers. have only a couple of halves before heading back to Andy's where everyone else drinks gin, and I have a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich.
Oh, such a risky day yesterday... so very nearly slept all day. Wake up at 2:42pm. An hour later I find myself drifting back into sleep. The day will be wasted. But sleep is calling. Sleep is here. No. the phone rings. Jen. Meet her in the Pavilion gardens. A beautiful day with only threats of rain. She lends me £20 and we have a few drinks in the pub.
Again, the kindness of people.
I won't forget it.

Fragments in Nine Lines.

Too much red wine on Sunday
made Monday only three hours.
I slept the rest.

Yesterday, I walked along the beach
under white grey skies
in the drizzle.

I saw a windmill on Sunday,
black against the sea,
like a god of childhood beetles.