Back uing anther laptop now,where the connection or my compter, is so slow, as to rove very tiresome.Not tomention the fact tat the keyboard doesn't pic up all key strokes. Having logged in ths morning I discover tat I amnot folowing any blogs any more either. Hmm. Not sure how that happened. I think Imay hav to use internet cafes aferthis one post.
Ah wel. Seem to have been ofered a job, working atcustomer services which I am ery pleased about. Start August 23rd. Aside from tat deep summer continues, or has ust started. That constantexhausion, of feeling clausrophobic in your own body. Not even August yet!
Well, wrting like this s proving ery annoying... However internetcafes in the future, so ormal servce (and followig) will be resumed...
Wednesday 28 July 2010
Thursday 22 July 2010
Fractured Words
In my room with the curtains shut. It seems another summer day out there. I am beginning to long for rain. For a little bit of autumn. Septemer seems so far away.
A night of strange dreams last night; street lamps in woods, Japanese gangsters in parks. I woke up about 11 this morning. A day free after my interview at a call centre yesterday. Three hours of role plays, psychometric tests, competency based interviews and vebal assessents.
Writing on my old laptop as my new oldlatop seems to have it the dust. Keys don't pick up every stroke though so will have to go back over this entry to edit. Annoying.
Sound of a drill outside.
I wonder what they're doing.
A night of strange dreams last night; street lamps in woods, Japanese gangsters in parks. I woke up about 11 this morning. A day free after my interview at a call centre yesterday. Three hours of role plays, psychometric tests, competency based interviews and vebal assessents.
Writing on my old laptop as my new oldlatop seems to have it the dust. Keys don't pick up every stroke though so will have to go back over this entry to edit. Annoying.
Sound of a drill outside.
I wonder what they're doing.
Sunday 18 July 2010
Snapshots
Another hot afternoon in the back garden of the Dumb Waiter cafe in the North Laine in Brighton. Sat drinking cups of tea, listening to cries of 'order!' from inside, and a woman at the counter talking about her sister's boyfriend. Sub-London accent cutting the stillness. Completing the crossword, caught on questions about the Colossi at Thebes. A woman with long grey hair sits next to us, tapping into a mobile phone, and a man to our right; 'I know I'm gay, but we don't all go there' he says to a man reading the paper sat on the steps that lead into the kitchen.
Last night, coming back from a small beer festval in a small pub at the base of Southover Street hill. Kind landlord let us sit outside after coming in time as long as we were quiet. Drinking some Belgian beer that tasted of Worcester Sauce. Strong and sour, but strangely pleasant. Crossing the level. The skateboard park silent, but the path across the green busy with rumours and the small hours on a Saturday night. A friend attacked here two months ago, serious enough to give him mild concussion. Always tales about this park. Sarah skips ahead of us, blurry under street light, and from the shadows in front of us, someone else skipping. Doppelganger movements, and she passes by without saying a word.
Saturday 17 July 2010
Whatever Comes to Mind
The curtains are open, and the buildings across the street are bright with 7:30pm sunlight. The sky is a blue-grey colour, like a badly mixed shade of paint for a painting never to be finished.
On my stereo, Sabbat's 'Dreamweaver, Reflections of a Yesterday' album, bought a few days ago for £4.00 from a second hand shop. I remember buying it on cassette tape in Worcester over the summer of 1989. I was 17...
The heatwave is interior. Andy was saying the same. Summer-exhaustion, limbs made of concrete and too much light.
A mirror by the sink. A silver cup from my sister's wedding holding paintbrushes next to an empty water bottle and a cleaning spray.
A statue of an elephant on top of a pile of CDs facing the door. My old landlady said that elephant figurines should always face the door.
I remember our old dining room at Woodstock Drive. We had left our Christmas decorations well into the new year of 1986. I thought this might bring us bad luck so I took them down.
The houses of Woodstock Drive. So many houses they could swallow us. Suburbia is a carnivore.
On my stereo, Sabbat's 'Dreamweaver, Reflections of a Yesterday' album, bought a few days ago for £4.00 from a second hand shop. I remember buying it on cassette tape in Worcester over the summer of 1989. I was 17...
The heatwave is interior. Andy was saying the same. Summer-exhaustion, limbs made of concrete and too much light.
A mirror by the sink. A silver cup from my sister's wedding holding paintbrushes next to an empty water bottle and a cleaning spray.
A statue of an elephant on top of a pile of CDs facing the door. My old landlady said that elephant figurines should always face the door.
I remember our old dining room at Woodstock Drive. We had left our Christmas decorations well into the new year of 1986. I thought this might bring us bad luck so I took them down.
The houses of Woodstock Drive. So many houses they could swallow us. Suburbia is a carnivore.
Friday 16 July 2010
The Grey and Welcome Sleep of September Afternoons
Summer is everywhere, the light is leached of depth and everything is pale and too loud.
I'd like it to be a rainy autumn day in Worcester, some forgotten fragment of my three years there. A day without lectures and the house on London Road empty. I would like to be walking back from town with a new book or an old album. The sky would be grey and windy. It might have rained that morning, certainly last night. walking up the London Road hill, past Harry's Wines and the Worcester Sauce Factory pub.
136 London Road would greet me with silence, and the sound of the kettle boiling in the basement kitchen would set off a soporific echo. Winding up the two flights of stairs to my room, I would notice it had begun raining. Thick September rain. Lying down on my bed, the cup of tea balanced on my radiator, I would listen to the wind in the open chimney of my room, and fall, inevitably, into a deep afternoon sleep, only waking when the light was failing and twilight crept up from the river and Perry Woods and the nameless alleyways that littered the town.
This is now autumn though and not Worcester and not the decade before the last one.
Summer is everywhere.
I'd like it to be a rainy autumn day in Worcester, some forgotten fragment of my three years there. A day without lectures and the house on London Road empty. I would like to be walking back from town with a new book or an old album. The sky would be grey and windy. It might have rained that morning, certainly last night. walking up the London Road hill, past Harry's Wines and the Worcester Sauce Factory pub.
136 London Road would greet me with silence, and the sound of the kettle boiling in the basement kitchen would set off a soporific echo. Winding up the two flights of stairs to my room, I would notice it had begun raining. Thick September rain. Lying down on my bed, the cup of tea balanced on my radiator, I would listen to the wind in the open chimney of my room, and fall, inevitably, into a deep afternoon sleep, only waking when the light was failing and twilight crept up from the river and Perry Woods and the nameless alleyways that littered the town.
This is now autumn though and not Worcester and not the decade before the last one.
Summer is everywhere.
Thursday 15 July 2010
Hidden Sun
A dark and breezy morning. The sound of the sea drifts with the wind, a tide of railway lines and seagulls.
In the churchyard, a black crow leaps from tomb to tomb. The wind in the branches of the trees sound like the waves. I could fall asleep. On the other side of the fence, a train passes by, blurred windows showing ghosts of people.
I dream of cafes and secoind hand bookshops that smell of attics and old childhoods. By the time I get back home I am too warm again, though the sun is still hidden behind banks of restless cloud.
Yellowing light against my curtains, the laptop humming, and nearly midday, this house of bedsits is silent.
In the churchyard, a black crow leaps from tomb to tomb. The wind in the branches of the trees sound like the waves. I could fall asleep. On the other side of the fence, a train passes by, blurred windows showing ghosts of people.
I dream of cafes and secoind hand bookshops that smell of attics and old childhoods. By the time I get back home I am too warm again, though the sun is still hidden behind banks of restless cloud.
Yellowing light against my curtains, the laptop humming, and nearly midday, this house of bedsits is silent.
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Signals from Autumn
A walk down the seafront with Em last night. The humidity had lessened, true, and though still warm wasn't quite as suffocating. She noticed it too though; 'it doesn't feel like a summer night.' It didn't, the beach huts seems sharply delineated, and the moonless sky was black as December. The pools of shadows between the lamps seemed darker, and the miles-distant pier at Littlehampton glimmered. Tiny fullstops of light, dotting the sentence of the unseen structure, a night time punctuation.
Still too early to look forward to autumn though, just one of those premonitions each season brings of the season following.
It rained last night, heavy drops of welcome rain. It muted the streets, brings a welcome quiet before the August carnival arrived.
I think I dreamt of carnivals last night, of travelling by helicopter through the English countryside. Stopping on fields by patches of trees. The helicopter trying to take off while I was still sat on the roof. Warning cries. A tractor approaching that looked like a steam train that wasn't going to stop.
The steam train / tractor was due to the fact that I am doing a CD cover for 'Andrea Kennt and the Cavalry', a man standing at a desolate train station waiting for a steam train to take him away from Judgement Station. Which is what I must do when I finish writing here. Procrastination fever, feel I could sleep for years...
Still too early to look forward to autumn though, just one of those premonitions each season brings of the season following.
It rained last night, heavy drops of welcome rain. It muted the streets, brings a welcome quiet before the August carnival arrived.
I think I dreamt of carnivals last night, of travelling by helicopter through the English countryside. Stopping on fields by patches of trees. The helicopter trying to take off while I was still sat on the roof. Warning cries. A tractor approaching that looked like a steam train that wasn't going to stop.
The steam train / tractor was due to the fact that I am doing a CD cover for 'Andrea Kennt and the Cavalry', a man standing at a desolate train station waiting for a steam train to take him away from Judgement Station. Which is what I must do when I finish writing here. Procrastination fever, feel I could sleep for years...
Monday 12 July 2010
Stilling the Carnival
The sun has dimmed outside, the heat has drawn back. At least for a while. A coolness descends. Monday morning, and all is quiet, even the seagulls sound muted.
The world cup is now a memory (and I still don't know who is won) and the month tumbles toward August.
Was dreaming last night about an indoor market in Worcester, a place that doesn't exist in waking life but I seem to have dreamt of before. The market was smaller that I remember, and I wished to visit a record stall there. The CDs were tightly packed in and I was afraid the stall would close.
I woke from this to the sound of shouting. Some kind of drama on the street outside. A woman swearing, a man swearing back. The police came, quietly. I could hear him explaining to them; 'She gave me the finger, it was an assault! I want her arrested!'
I eventually dropped back to sleep.
I have an array of missions to do today; write out a reference for Pam, go down the council tax office, do laundry, do the first roughs of Andrea's CD cover artwork. Still, up fairly early, despite a fitful and broken sleep last night.
Bottles of rum at Andy's flat then Ben's flat on Saturday night. One of Ben's friend explaining to us a complicated theological delusion, of the Dead Lord, the Dark Lord and the Devil. The three choices apparently. Still, he is off to London to be exorcised on Thursday. Never meant him before, nor likely to again. Get back to Andy's flat at about 8:00am, spend all day sleeping on the sofa. Sunday quick as a broken candle.
A heatwave forecast, but I can taste rain in the air. Rain might be good, but whatever, it certainly feels like the summer carnival is stilled this morning. A breath of peace. It feels nice.
The world cup is now a memory (and I still don't know who is won) and the month tumbles toward August.
Was dreaming last night about an indoor market in Worcester, a place that doesn't exist in waking life but I seem to have dreamt of before. The market was smaller that I remember, and I wished to visit a record stall there. The CDs were tightly packed in and I was afraid the stall would close.
I woke from this to the sound of shouting. Some kind of drama on the street outside. A woman swearing, a man swearing back. The police came, quietly. I could hear him explaining to them; 'She gave me the finger, it was an assault! I want her arrested!'
I eventually dropped back to sleep.
I have an array of missions to do today; write out a reference for Pam, go down the council tax office, do laundry, do the first roughs of Andrea's CD cover artwork. Still, up fairly early, despite a fitful and broken sleep last night.
Bottles of rum at Andy's flat then Ben's flat on Saturday night. One of Ben's friend explaining to us a complicated theological delusion, of the Dead Lord, the Dark Lord and the Devil. The three choices apparently. Still, he is off to London to be exorcised on Thursday. Never meant him before, nor likely to again. Get back to Andy's flat at about 8:00am, spend all day sleeping on the sofa. Sunday quick as a broken candle.
A heatwave forecast, but I can taste rain in the air. Rain might be good, but whatever, it certainly feels like the summer carnival is stilled this morning. A breath of peace. It feels nice.
Friday 9 July 2010
Signals from the Wireless Summer
Deep, deep in the summer now.
Early morning, whilst still in bed, you can taste the heat, that metallic composite of car-metal and sea air. The seagulls start before dawn, their cacophony-chorus of untranslatable, somehow prehistoric shrieks and calls cutting across the heavy air. Newspaper stories of nesting seagulls, aggressively defending their young when nests are placed in unlikely and ill advised places. Cats scared to go outside, postmen approaching certain houses in trepidation. Rumours in Peachehaven of seagulls warring against people, revenge attacks for a number of air-rifle shootings. No-one safe from the summer madness.
I watch a cat from her balcony, silkily drifting under car-shadow and pavement desert.
There's a gunman loose somewhere in the north of this country. A once obscure place, Rothbury, now a locus of fear and questions. Newspaper articles and television interviews. The gunman gone to ground in a myth of caves and woods and heathland. Letters sent to the police, a 21st century Jack the Ripper. Abandoned campsites found, rumours of accomplices and victims. The summer travels on.
War in South Africa. The world cup coming to an end. Sat in my bedsit on drifting afternoons, shouts of victory or despair from the pubs. So many people in Brighton not from England, there has been little in the way of dissipation of excitement. I profess to friends a vague interest in the outcome of the world cup, and I am never interested in football. Sat in the Pavilion Gardens the other day, two Meditterenean looking girls holding a flag of the ir country. Battle-cries. Herald held high. Praying for knights armed with a ball and feet. No hands allowed. An armless war.
Except for the goalkeeper of course.
Things settle. Redundancy in. Housing benefit in next week so I can pay the rent arrears. Kindly Mr Ahmend the landlord, who has been unfailingly understanding about it all. The calm of his office around the corner from here, huge first floor room with paintings of aircraft on the walls, and the shadows of trees on the street outside cool and consolatory that fall against glass and onto the wooden floorboards of his room.
Summer disquiet. Like this every year, can never relax over summers. Anti-Sad, summer affective disorder. To try and rest in summer is like trying to sleep amongst the machines of night-factories in some industrial county in an obscure region of Mexico. Mexico, never seen, only dreamt of, drug wars and heat, deserts and miles and miles of emptiness.
Wait for the autumnal communion, the September suburbs of October town. Like on a too-long train journey, craning my neck against the window, watching the rails and the distance, wishing your destination would hurry. Destinations never come, the traveller only arrives.
At night when I fall into sleep, the seagulls are still not quiet, and instead of the shouts and cries of football supporters, the ragged arguments of heat and alcohol, of taxi drivers and passers by.
And the summer continues, and this deep in summer there can be no memory of what was or what is to be. No spring, no autumn, and winter not even a rumour, a sharp edged fairytale of ice and black-illimitable nights. The idea of night falling at 4pm is ridiculous, a natural apocalypse that happens every year and destroys nothing.
When I sleep, I dream of train stations and meetings in the hushed interiors of cafes that seem more like the quiet air of cathedrals, or disused buildings on old airbases, no longer used, decommisioned in the summer wars.
Early morning, whilst still in bed, you can taste the heat, that metallic composite of car-metal and sea air. The seagulls start before dawn, their cacophony-chorus of untranslatable, somehow prehistoric shrieks and calls cutting across the heavy air. Newspaper stories of nesting seagulls, aggressively defending their young when nests are placed in unlikely and ill advised places. Cats scared to go outside, postmen approaching certain houses in trepidation. Rumours in Peachehaven of seagulls warring against people, revenge attacks for a number of air-rifle shootings. No-one safe from the summer madness.
I watch a cat from her balcony, silkily drifting under car-shadow and pavement desert.
There's a gunman loose somewhere in the north of this country. A once obscure place, Rothbury, now a locus of fear and questions. Newspaper articles and television interviews. The gunman gone to ground in a myth of caves and woods and heathland. Letters sent to the police, a 21st century Jack the Ripper. Abandoned campsites found, rumours of accomplices and victims. The summer travels on.
War in South Africa. The world cup coming to an end. Sat in my bedsit on drifting afternoons, shouts of victory or despair from the pubs. So many people in Brighton not from England, there has been little in the way of dissipation of excitement. I profess to friends a vague interest in the outcome of the world cup, and I am never interested in football. Sat in the Pavilion Gardens the other day, two Meditterenean looking girls holding a flag of the ir country. Battle-cries. Herald held high. Praying for knights armed with a ball and feet. No hands allowed. An armless war.
Except for the goalkeeper of course.
Things settle. Redundancy in. Housing benefit in next week so I can pay the rent arrears. Kindly Mr Ahmend the landlord, who has been unfailingly understanding about it all. The calm of his office around the corner from here, huge first floor room with paintings of aircraft on the walls, and the shadows of trees on the street outside cool and consolatory that fall against glass and onto the wooden floorboards of his room.
Summer disquiet. Like this every year, can never relax over summers. Anti-Sad, summer affective disorder. To try and rest in summer is like trying to sleep amongst the machines of night-factories in some industrial county in an obscure region of Mexico. Mexico, never seen, only dreamt of, drug wars and heat, deserts and miles and miles of emptiness.
Wait for the autumnal communion, the September suburbs of October town. Like on a too-long train journey, craning my neck against the window, watching the rails and the distance, wishing your destination would hurry. Destinations never come, the traveller only arrives.
At night when I fall into sleep, the seagulls are still not quiet, and instead of the shouts and cries of football supporters, the ragged arguments of heat and alcohol, of taxi drivers and passers by.
And the summer continues, and this deep in summer there can be no memory of what was or what is to be. No spring, no autumn, and winter not even a rumour, a sharp edged fairytale of ice and black-illimitable nights. The idea of night falling at 4pm is ridiculous, a natural apocalypse that happens every year and destroys nothing.
When I sleep, I dream of train stations and meetings in the hushed interiors of cafes that seem more like the quiet air of cathedrals, or disused buildings on old airbases, no longer used, decommisioned in the summer wars.
Wednesday 7 July 2010
Brief Memory of a Very Strange Television Show
A quick one this, as I am off out in a moment to the Pavilion Gardens for more coffee and lying about in the sun. Ah, the horrors of unemployment... This is a memory of a television show from the (I imagine) 1970s. It was on during childrens TV (about 4:30 - 5:00pm) and all I have is the memory of one scene, possibly two.
A group of people are in an underground cavern, searching for something. A dark and shadowy labyrinth, rock walls and sandy floor. Someone disturbs a rock, and there glides from behind the rock, a snake, only this snake has a human skull for it's head... This was the cliffhanger at the end of an episode.
The other memory associated with this episode / story / series is a more ambiguous one. A group of people in a house. They are looking at display cases of giant insects, of alarming and frightening type.
I have no idea whether or not these memories are real, or, as I have begun to suspect, are the result of a dream. The first scene seems more like a real memory than the second. For a long time I thought it might be an episode of 'The Tomorrow People', but now I'm not so sure. There are still plenty of old series I haven't seen yet which the scenes might form a part of; 'King of the Castle', 'Escape into the Night', 'Children of the Stones', 'The Owl Service'...
If anyone can help solve this mystery, I'd be incredibly thankful, but I have a feeling that this is one question that might never be answered...
A group of people are in an underground cavern, searching for something. A dark and shadowy labyrinth, rock walls and sandy floor. Someone disturbs a rock, and there glides from behind the rock, a snake, only this snake has a human skull for it's head... This was the cliffhanger at the end of an episode.
The other memory associated with this episode / story / series is a more ambiguous one. A group of people in a house. They are looking at display cases of giant insects, of alarming and frightening type.
I have no idea whether or not these memories are real, or, as I have begun to suspect, are the result of a dream. The first scene seems more like a real memory than the second. For a long time I thought it might be an episode of 'The Tomorrow People', but now I'm not so sure. There are still plenty of old series I haven't seen yet which the scenes might form a part of; 'King of the Castle', 'Escape into the Night', 'Children of the Stones', 'The Owl Service'...
If anyone can help solve this mystery, I'd be incredibly thankful, but I have a feeling that this is one question that might never be answered...
Monday 5 July 2010
Sapphire and Steel
Sapphire and Steel, whispered about by thirty somethings as terrifying them as a child, remains my favourite programme ever, even usurping Doctor Who. It ran, in a haphazard fashion from 1978 - 1982, finishing when I was 10, and I finally got around to seeing them when they were released on VHS over 1992 - 1993. When I saw them again, it was one of those rare occasions in life when reality actually exceeds expectations.
I wasn't expecting that at all. When I was in the 6th form, there was a curious nostalgia amongst my friends and myself for Sapphire and Steel. Rumours in the common room, half-memories no-one really remembered 'a faceless man','a haunted railway station', 'a floating pillow', 'people trapped in a picture'. Great excitement was caused by a clip of Sapphire and Steel on Wogan. It showed Steel (played by David McCallum) in a darkened room talking to a ghost of a soldier... This was all we had, that, and a plot synopsis of the last ever story in a magazine called TV Zone; a petrol station where customers kept turning into shadows? Surely the reality would be disappointing...
No, quite the opposite... S&S remains as startlingly original and terrifying as it ever was, not to mention completely inexplicable...
Assignment One (as the stories became known, they had no titles at the time) introduced us to our anti-heroes, after an atmospheric title sequence involving a burning grid in space, a barely seen helmet type thing floating in a starfield and an ominous voiceover telling us that 'all irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension, transuranic elements may not be used where there is life, medium atomic weights are available... Sapphire and Steel have been assigned'.
And so began the most unlikely programme to be broadcast at 7:00pm on a weeknight...
So, in Assignment One, a boy is working on his homework in a dark and eerie farmhouse. The myriad of clocks in the house stopping working, and his sister tells him that their parents have vanished. Sapphire and Steel appear 'You called us, we came' said Steel, not at his most comforting.
Sapphire and Steel were cold and alien. Not at all the kind of heroes you wanted to come and rescue you if some strange phenomena had made your parents vanish. Steel was cold, dressed in a grey suit, and made no attempt at comfort, empathy or even explanations. Sapphire, outwardly warm and friendly, seems deceptive and not to be trusted. She also has the power to 'borrow time', to access images from the past... which she does in the room where the parents had vanished. A wall disappears, replaced by a white vortex in which a plague victim appears floating toward them...
There is little attempt at explanations in S&S, and what explanations there are contradict themselves in later episodes. In Assignment One, Sapphire explains how time is a corridor, and sometimes the fabric of the corridor becomes worn, and that time itelf can reach in through this corridor and take things and people. Steel adds to this by saying that there are forces from the very beginnings of time and the very ends of time that search for the weak places in that corridor, searching for a way in. The weak places in the farmhouse are nursery rhymes; 'ring-a-ring-roses' bringing up ghosts of plague victims, 'Goosey goosey gander' summoning civil war soldiers that try and behead Sapphire. By this point in the story she has become trapped in a painting on the wall, of the house as it was when it was built. Steel only manages to free her by bringing the temperature of the painting down to absolute zero. Complex and hypnotic, the story unfolds like a half remembered nightmare. Everything is shot inside a farmhouse set in a studio, giving a claustrophobic, theatrical feel. The nature of the enemy is never really explained. Is it one of the forces from the start and end of time? Is it time itself? Malevolent duplicates of the boy's parents lure him into the cellar. Sapphire and Steel -both telepathic- can communicate with him, but not see him. Eventually the little girl is used as bait; by repeating a nursery rhyme, she brings the force down into the cellar and into the foundation stone where it is destroyed by Lead, another medium atomic weight who has joined them.
And thats another thing. The nature of the protagonists is never revealed, only vague hints to their origins. Certainly not human, yet not quite extra-terrestrial. Steel warns that the 'Transuranics are never to be trusted' because they are 'unstable'.
A kind of equilibrium is restored at the end, the clocks start and the parents are returned, but I always wonder about the boy. The viewer never sees the parents except as their malevolent duplicates. One wonders if he will really ever trust them again...
And that was a kind of happy ending in the disquieting world of Sapphire and Steel.
Assignment Two sees them at an abandoned railway station. There is a ghost hunter there investigating the phantom of a soldier, but there is something else, a 'kind of darkness'... Assignment Two stretched over eight weeks (interrupted when first broadcast by some 1970s strike or another) and was rambling and in no hurry to get where it was going. The railway platform seems to be haunted by summer, even though it is October. Fresh flowers appear on this platform, the ghost of an old world war 1soldier appears. Communication with him reveals a hatred for the flower girls that sent them off to their deaths... but then there are ghosts from World War 2 also; men trapped in an experimental submarine. Sapphire and Steel are drawn into their horrific depths trapped underwater with the air failing, and also into the death of a pilot on his last flight... They wonder if the railway station might be a 'recruiting ground for the dead'.It transpires that something is using these ghosts. A seance is held, and it is revealed that something referred to as the 'Darkness' is feeding on the resentment of those who died prematurely at war. The Darkness promises eventual release for these ghosts, though that is a lie, and they will be trapped there in eternity, the darkness feeding always on their hatred. When the soldier realises this, he delivers one of the most chilling lines on television, 'not this... not forever'.
Sapphire becomes possessed by the darkness. Black eyes, no pupils, no white, just utter darkness. At one point she takes her hands away from her face revealing nothing but a mass of mangled meat. My god, this was on at 7:00 in the evening.
The ending is horrible. Sapphire and Steel sacrifice the ghost hunter to the darkness. His death, fixed some point in the future, is premature. The Darkness takes their sacrifice, their 'unique resentment'. This unique resentment is not the resentment of the dead ghost hunter, but the resentment of time itself, the ghost hunter's death being a kind of atrocity against time...
Assignment Three I always find the most disturbing. Time travellers from the future are living in an invisible penthouse on top of a present-day office block. They have lost contact with control and the other time travelling projects. Coats fall off hooks, cushions and pillows move. When one of the time travellers takes a joint of meat out of the fridge, she is assailed by images of screaming animals and abbatoirs, a slaughterhouse hell. Sapphire and Steel are joined in this story by Silver, another medium atomic weight. The three eventually gain access to the penthouse. The time travellers baby is accelerated into adulthood, with the power to send people and things back into their own chemical past. Steel is attacked by a floating pillow cum swan ghost. Sapphire becomes trapped in another project (the rural project I thin) where she discovers that all the participants have killed themselves to prevent what was there getting back into the future. Silver, a 'technician' conducts experiments. There seems to be blood in the walls, the blood of an animal, in fact all animals. These scientists of the future, after the extinction of all animal life, bred a kind of animal in their laboratories, 'nothing more than pieces of meat'. These 'pieces of meat' were used as time travelling devices, only the creature that bought them back has begun experimenting on them and wants revenge. The creature escapes the wall, but is lured back in by the time-agents throwing joints of meat back into the wall, 'feed it, feed it!'.
Sapphire instructs Steel and Silver to send the travellers back into their future with the creature, this revengeful piece of meat. 'Let them deal with it, not our problem' seems to be her rationale. Despite the laboured moral ('experimenting on animals is wrong') the truly chilling sting in this tale is how inhuman our 'heroes' seem.
Assignment Four takes place in an old junk shop where the 'shape', a faceless man, can take on any form he desires, and is in every photograph in existence, whether hidden in the shadows, or in the street beyond, or behind a wall, or in a house. 'Every photograph is a photograph of infinity' Steel reveals. The Shape who can travel between photographs spends his time bringing other photographs to life, namely photographs of Victorian children, sepia-sadists who threaten to gouge out Sapphire's eyes with an umbrella. They also crumble to dust when hugged. The Shape also traps people in photographs too. In a rather effective and sickening ending, the Shape sets one of these photographs on fire. The woman trapped in the photograph, still conscious and completely immobile, screams out in agony at the end of episode three as she is burned alive. The scream lingers on into the end music. Watching this recently, I was stunned at how this was ever broadcast at the time it was. After thirty years the story is still as disturbing as ever. Eventually, the Shape is trapped in a kaleidoscope, mirrors reflecting mirrors, another kind of infinity. While Sapphire and Steel search for the kaleidoscope to trap the Shape in, it whispers to the tenant of the shop above the flat, that it will wait for her, that it will find her, wherever she is... Sapphire and Steel arrange for the Kaleidoscope to be present on a ship that is destined to be buried in ice, and undiscovered for a number of decades. As they leave they tell the woman to destroy all photographs ever taken of her, and to never have another one taken... An impossible task, and it is never really explained why the Shape could eventually use photographs and for what ends.
We'll ignore the fifth story, written not by P J Hammond who wrote the rest of the series, but by some other people whose names I can't recall now. This, briefly, involved a dinner party and a virus that time wanted to use to destroy the human race.
Last of all there is Assignment Six, to my mind, the greatest pieces of supernatural / science fiction programminbg ever. Called to a petrol station, Sapphire and Steel discover Silver already there, though he doesn't know why. There is no time at the petrol station, the same six seconds repeating themselves again and again. There is no way out of the petrol station, an invisible and impassable barrier traps them. There is a couple there from 1948, who realise they are in the wrong time zone. Occasionally they vanish, leaving only shadows behind. There is also the ghost of an old man, who sees the time-agents as ghosts themselves. In a chaos of echoes and noise, time shifts forward by twenty minutes to 'whatever is going to happen... here'.
But nothing happens. This is a story that has no beginning and middle, only an end. Another character arrives, this time a kind of circus performer, called Johnny Jack, from 1956. He has the same habit of leaving shadows behind too. Sapphire postulates the theory that there is 'nothing to wait for' and that 'what if it is waiting for us?'
Silver conducts experiments on Johnny Jacks' tambourine. He discovers it has never been used as a musical instrument, despite his claims that he is the 'only real musician' amongst his fellow performers. Sapphire turns back time, and is greeted by an image of the old man, the man in the cafe and Johnny Jack is grey suits, much like Steel wears... and an image of herself and Steel and shadows. 'Our death... our destruction' she explains to Steel.
And then there is the end of episode three, which still sends chills down my spine no matter how many times I see it. Sapphire realises who, or what, they are. 'They're like us Steel, but they're like us!'. Steel muses on this, 'the same as us?' 'Well not quite... I think they answer to a higher authority'.
The three men stand up in their respective positions around the petrol station simultaneously. Whatever they are wearing is replaced by Steel's sober suits, and their eyes crackle blue, the same as Sapphire's when she uses her powers to turn back time.
The episode ends and turns everything we thought we knew about Sapphire and Steel upside down. There we were thinking that Sapphire and Steel, despite their ambiguities, were working for whatever forces were controlling each dimension, and now, we discover a whole hierarchy of authorities.
In the last ever episode, it transpires that three are 'transient beings' who can take on any form but they should be 'locked in the past'. It seems that the mysterious 'higher authority' have trained them to move into the future to assassinate Sapphire and Steel. Silver discusses they are using a 'time box' to move forward through time, and this time box takes the form of a chess box. Silver manages to duplicate the box, which also works as a weapon too, to send people back into the triassic period. Johnny Jack and the old man are duly dispatched. Sapphire asks to look into the box 'like a fortune tellers crystal'. Silver says 'its best not to know'. Silver opens the box, and inside the box is nothing but space, an infinity of stars. 'Days will become years, and years will become hundred of years, there is nothing but space' Sapphire says in dreamy reverie. Silver looks at her with a dark look. What of the woman with the man? She begs Sapphire and Steel to take her with them, but they discover she has some kind of implant in her chest. They take out the implant and she collapses.
They try to make it through the barrier, but the man catches them. He opens his time box, and a chaos of stars rushes out.
The last scene. The interior of the cafe at the petrol station. Sapphire and Steel enter, finding the man and the woman at one of the tables. The man tells them they are in the wrong time. Steel threatens them with the time box. The man opens his own time box. Nothing but chess pieces. The man and woman stand up. The woman says 'this place you see, this place was the trap. This place is nowhere and its forever'. They vanish. Steel opens his own time box. Nothing but chess pieces. He opens the curtains of the window. Nothing but stars. Goes to the door, nothing but stars. Sapphire, resigned, sits at the table 'I saw the future' she says 'and it was our future'. The last ever shot of the series is of Sapphire and Steel peering out of a window floating in space. For a series about time it was the perfect ending, the two time agents trapped forever in space.
There you have it, Sapphire and Steel. Well worth seeking out, and looking past the dated special effects and 70s fashion. Was it a science fiction series? A supernatural series? There really was nothing else like it. It explained nothing, didn't talk down to the viewers. The performances are superb (particularly the ghost hunter in Assignment Two) and David McCallum and Joanna Lumley as the eponymous heroes play it absolutely straight. The almost total lack of humour in the series combined with the negligible, often unseen nature of their enemies, makes the threats seem truly malevolent and believable. The atmosphere of the show is truly nightmarish, even more so given the ambiguous victories of the main protagonists, and, of course, their eventual defeat. Imagine an insane Rene Magritte writing for Doctor Who and you still wouldn't be anywhere near as truly strange this programme is.
Ah well, there ends my probably not very interesting ramble. I have bed to go to, and a 'group session' at the job centre tomorrow to go to... Should be fun. I bet it will feel like being trapped in a motorway service station for eternity...
I wasn't expecting that at all. When I was in the 6th form, there was a curious nostalgia amongst my friends and myself for Sapphire and Steel. Rumours in the common room, half-memories no-one really remembered 'a faceless man','a haunted railway station', 'a floating pillow', 'people trapped in a picture'. Great excitement was caused by a clip of Sapphire and Steel on Wogan. It showed Steel (played by David McCallum) in a darkened room talking to a ghost of a soldier... This was all we had, that, and a plot synopsis of the last ever story in a magazine called TV Zone; a petrol station where customers kept turning into shadows? Surely the reality would be disappointing...
No, quite the opposite... S&S remains as startlingly original and terrifying as it ever was, not to mention completely inexplicable...
Assignment One (as the stories became known, they had no titles at the time) introduced us to our anti-heroes, after an atmospheric title sequence involving a burning grid in space, a barely seen helmet type thing floating in a starfield and an ominous voiceover telling us that 'all irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension, transuranic elements may not be used where there is life, medium atomic weights are available... Sapphire and Steel have been assigned'.
And so began the most unlikely programme to be broadcast at 7:00pm on a weeknight...
So, in Assignment One, a boy is working on his homework in a dark and eerie farmhouse. The myriad of clocks in the house stopping working, and his sister tells him that their parents have vanished. Sapphire and Steel appear 'You called us, we came' said Steel, not at his most comforting.
Sapphire and Steel were cold and alien. Not at all the kind of heroes you wanted to come and rescue you if some strange phenomena had made your parents vanish. Steel was cold, dressed in a grey suit, and made no attempt at comfort, empathy or even explanations. Sapphire, outwardly warm and friendly, seems deceptive and not to be trusted. She also has the power to 'borrow time', to access images from the past... which she does in the room where the parents had vanished. A wall disappears, replaced by a white vortex in which a plague victim appears floating toward them...
There is little attempt at explanations in S&S, and what explanations there are contradict themselves in later episodes. In Assignment One, Sapphire explains how time is a corridor, and sometimes the fabric of the corridor becomes worn, and that time itelf can reach in through this corridor and take things and people. Steel adds to this by saying that there are forces from the very beginnings of time and the very ends of time that search for the weak places in that corridor, searching for a way in. The weak places in the farmhouse are nursery rhymes; 'ring-a-ring-roses' bringing up ghosts of plague victims, 'Goosey goosey gander' summoning civil war soldiers that try and behead Sapphire. By this point in the story she has become trapped in a painting on the wall, of the house as it was when it was built. Steel only manages to free her by bringing the temperature of the painting down to absolute zero. Complex and hypnotic, the story unfolds like a half remembered nightmare. Everything is shot inside a farmhouse set in a studio, giving a claustrophobic, theatrical feel. The nature of the enemy is never really explained. Is it one of the forces from the start and end of time? Is it time itself? Malevolent duplicates of the boy's parents lure him into the cellar. Sapphire and Steel -both telepathic- can communicate with him, but not see him. Eventually the little girl is used as bait; by repeating a nursery rhyme, she brings the force down into the cellar and into the foundation stone where it is destroyed by Lead, another medium atomic weight who has joined them.
And thats another thing. The nature of the protagonists is never revealed, only vague hints to their origins. Certainly not human, yet not quite extra-terrestrial. Steel warns that the 'Transuranics are never to be trusted' because they are 'unstable'.
A kind of equilibrium is restored at the end, the clocks start and the parents are returned, but I always wonder about the boy. The viewer never sees the parents except as their malevolent duplicates. One wonders if he will really ever trust them again...
And that was a kind of happy ending in the disquieting world of Sapphire and Steel.
Assignment Two sees them at an abandoned railway station. There is a ghost hunter there investigating the phantom of a soldier, but there is something else, a 'kind of darkness'... Assignment Two stretched over eight weeks (interrupted when first broadcast by some 1970s strike or another) and was rambling and in no hurry to get where it was going. The railway platform seems to be haunted by summer, even though it is October. Fresh flowers appear on this platform, the ghost of an old world war 1soldier appears. Communication with him reveals a hatred for the flower girls that sent them off to their deaths... but then there are ghosts from World War 2 also; men trapped in an experimental submarine. Sapphire and Steel are drawn into their horrific depths trapped underwater with the air failing, and also into the death of a pilot on his last flight... They wonder if the railway station might be a 'recruiting ground for the dead'.It transpires that something is using these ghosts. A seance is held, and it is revealed that something referred to as the 'Darkness' is feeding on the resentment of those who died prematurely at war. The Darkness promises eventual release for these ghosts, though that is a lie, and they will be trapped there in eternity, the darkness feeding always on their hatred. When the soldier realises this, he delivers one of the most chilling lines on television, 'not this... not forever'.
Sapphire becomes possessed by the darkness. Black eyes, no pupils, no white, just utter darkness. At one point she takes her hands away from her face revealing nothing but a mass of mangled meat. My god, this was on at 7:00 in the evening.
The ending is horrible. Sapphire and Steel sacrifice the ghost hunter to the darkness. His death, fixed some point in the future, is premature. The Darkness takes their sacrifice, their 'unique resentment'. This unique resentment is not the resentment of the dead ghost hunter, but the resentment of time itself, the ghost hunter's death being a kind of atrocity against time...
Assignment Three I always find the most disturbing. Time travellers from the future are living in an invisible penthouse on top of a present-day office block. They have lost contact with control and the other time travelling projects. Coats fall off hooks, cushions and pillows move. When one of the time travellers takes a joint of meat out of the fridge, she is assailed by images of screaming animals and abbatoirs, a slaughterhouse hell. Sapphire and Steel are joined in this story by Silver, another medium atomic weight. The three eventually gain access to the penthouse. The time travellers baby is accelerated into adulthood, with the power to send people and things back into their own chemical past. Steel is attacked by a floating pillow cum swan ghost. Sapphire becomes trapped in another project (the rural project I thin) where she discovers that all the participants have killed themselves to prevent what was there getting back into the future. Silver, a 'technician' conducts experiments. There seems to be blood in the walls, the blood of an animal, in fact all animals. These scientists of the future, after the extinction of all animal life, bred a kind of animal in their laboratories, 'nothing more than pieces of meat'. These 'pieces of meat' were used as time travelling devices, only the creature that bought them back has begun experimenting on them and wants revenge. The creature escapes the wall, but is lured back in by the time-agents throwing joints of meat back into the wall, 'feed it, feed it!'.
Sapphire instructs Steel and Silver to send the travellers back into their future with the creature, this revengeful piece of meat. 'Let them deal with it, not our problem' seems to be her rationale. Despite the laboured moral ('experimenting on animals is wrong') the truly chilling sting in this tale is how inhuman our 'heroes' seem.
Assignment Four takes place in an old junk shop where the 'shape', a faceless man, can take on any form he desires, and is in every photograph in existence, whether hidden in the shadows, or in the street beyond, or behind a wall, or in a house. 'Every photograph is a photograph of infinity' Steel reveals. The Shape who can travel between photographs spends his time bringing other photographs to life, namely photographs of Victorian children, sepia-sadists who threaten to gouge out Sapphire's eyes with an umbrella. They also crumble to dust when hugged. The Shape also traps people in photographs too. In a rather effective and sickening ending, the Shape sets one of these photographs on fire. The woman trapped in the photograph, still conscious and completely immobile, screams out in agony at the end of episode three as she is burned alive. The scream lingers on into the end music. Watching this recently, I was stunned at how this was ever broadcast at the time it was. After thirty years the story is still as disturbing as ever. Eventually, the Shape is trapped in a kaleidoscope, mirrors reflecting mirrors, another kind of infinity. While Sapphire and Steel search for the kaleidoscope to trap the Shape in, it whispers to the tenant of the shop above the flat, that it will wait for her, that it will find her, wherever she is... Sapphire and Steel arrange for the Kaleidoscope to be present on a ship that is destined to be buried in ice, and undiscovered for a number of decades. As they leave they tell the woman to destroy all photographs ever taken of her, and to never have another one taken... An impossible task, and it is never really explained why the Shape could eventually use photographs and for what ends.
We'll ignore the fifth story, written not by P J Hammond who wrote the rest of the series, but by some other people whose names I can't recall now. This, briefly, involved a dinner party and a virus that time wanted to use to destroy the human race.
Last of all there is Assignment Six, to my mind, the greatest pieces of supernatural / science fiction programminbg ever. Called to a petrol station, Sapphire and Steel discover Silver already there, though he doesn't know why. There is no time at the petrol station, the same six seconds repeating themselves again and again. There is no way out of the petrol station, an invisible and impassable barrier traps them. There is a couple there from 1948, who realise they are in the wrong time zone. Occasionally they vanish, leaving only shadows behind. There is also the ghost of an old man, who sees the time-agents as ghosts themselves. In a chaos of echoes and noise, time shifts forward by twenty minutes to 'whatever is going to happen... here'.
But nothing happens. This is a story that has no beginning and middle, only an end. Another character arrives, this time a kind of circus performer, called Johnny Jack, from 1956. He has the same habit of leaving shadows behind too. Sapphire postulates the theory that there is 'nothing to wait for' and that 'what if it is waiting for us?'
Silver conducts experiments on Johnny Jacks' tambourine. He discovers it has never been used as a musical instrument, despite his claims that he is the 'only real musician' amongst his fellow performers. Sapphire turns back time, and is greeted by an image of the old man, the man in the cafe and Johnny Jack is grey suits, much like Steel wears... and an image of herself and Steel and shadows. 'Our death... our destruction' she explains to Steel.
And then there is the end of episode three, which still sends chills down my spine no matter how many times I see it. Sapphire realises who, or what, they are. 'They're like us Steel, but they're like us!'. Steel muses on this, 'the same as us?' 'Well not quite... I think they answer to a higher authority'.
The three men stand up in their respective positions around the petrol station simultaneously. Whatever they are wearing is replaced by Steel's sober suits, and their eyes crackle blue, the same as Sapphire's when she uses her powers to turn back time.
The episode ends and turns everything we thought we knew about Sapphire and Steel upside down. There we were thinking that Sapphire and Steel, despite their ambiguities, were working for whatever forces were controlling each dimension, and now, we discover a whole hierarchy of authorities.
In the last ever episode, it transpires that three are 'transient beings' who can take on any form but they should be 'locked in the past'. It seems that the mysterious 'higher authority' have trained them to move into the future to assassinate Sapphire and Steel. Silver discusses they are using a 'time box' to move forward through time, and this time box takes the form of a chess box. Silver manages to duplicate the box, which also works as a weapon too, to send people back into the triassic period. Johnny Jack and the old man are duly dispatched. Sapphire asks to look into the box 'like a fortune tellers crystal'. Silver says 'its best not to know'. Silver opens the box, and inside the box is nothing but space, an infinity of stars. 'Days will become years, and years will become hundred of years, there is nothing but space' Sapphire says in dreamy reverie. Silver looks at her with a dark look. What of the woman with the man? She begs Sapphire and Steel to take her with them, but they discover she has some kind of implant in her chest. They take out the implant and she collapses.
They try to make it through the barrier, but the man catches them. He opens his time box, and a chaos of stars rushes out.
The last scene. The interior of the cafe at the petrol station. Sapphire and Steel enter, finding the man and the woman at one of the tables. The man tells them they are in the wrong time. Steel threatens them with the time box. The man opens his own time box. Nothing but chess pieces. The man and woman stand up. The woman says 'this place you see, this place was the trap. This place is nowhere and its forever'. They vanish. Steel opens his own time box. Nothing but chess pieces. He opens the curtains of the window. Nothing but stars. Goes to the door, nothing but stars. Sapphire, resigned, sits at the table 'I saw the future' she says 'and it was our future'. The last ever shot of the series is of Sapphire and Steel peering out of a window floating in space. For a series about time it was the perfect ending, the two time agents trapped forever in space.
There you have it, Sapphire and Steel. Well worth seeking out, and looking past the dated special effects and 70s fashion. Was it a science fiction series? A supernatural series? There really was nothing else like it. It explained nothing, didn't talk down to the viewers. The performances are superb (particularly the ghost hunter in Assignment Two) and David McCallum and Joanna Lumley as the eponymous heroes play it absolutely straight. The almost total lack of humour in the series combined with the negligible, often unseen nature of their enemies, makes the threats seem truly malevolent and believable. The atmosphere of the show is truly nightmarish, even more so given the ambiguous victories of the main protagonists, and, of course, their eventual defeat. Imagine an insane Rene Magritte writing for Doctor Who and you still wouldn't be anywhere near as truly strange this programme is.
Ah well, there ends my probably not very interesting ramble. I have bed to go to, and a 'group session' at the job centre tomorrow to go to... Should be fun. I bet it will feel like being trapped in a motorway service station for eternity...
Saturday 3 July 2010
Thirteen Years Back and Now
New summers become old summers. Sat in my room I feel the heat shift, the bright light waver, clocks turn back.
I could be back in Worcester again, in those two summers I spent there, walking back along the canal in the August of 1997. I had been down to visit Mina, sometime in August, locked in deep summer, then the train back to Worcester, taking a short cut along the canal to the house back on London Road. Passing the Commandery, Harrys Wines, up the slope of London Road hill.
There was only Alistair, Paul and myself in the house that summer. Stretched out onto four storeys, rambling corridors, a ragged garden, the taste of dust and dreaminess in all the rooms. Paul worked as a computer programmer and Alistair, over the summer anyway before university started again, worked in the Kays factory, where everyone seemed to work, at least that summer.
Alistair would get home early afternoon, and sit in the playroom and write songs on his guitar. I could see him through the corrugated perspex of the playroom roof from my room. beyond the playroom, the long garden, and the long dead and rusted car by the shed where the next summer I was to find a book of poems written by a schoolgirl in Kuala Lumpa.
Across the road to the shops 'Pause for Thought' to get dinner, usually a cheap pizza, and the evenings often spent in the garden listening to the Cranes and And Also The Trees.
I would stay awake long into the small hours drifting and night-dreaming in the labyrinthine house. Paul on the floor above me, and Alistair in the room below. We would wait for everyone else to come back, for the second year to start. Those empty rooms waiting for occupants.
Thirteen years ago.
I'm going to have a quick shower, then meet Alistair (amongst others) at the Meeting Place Cafe on the seafront. The heat is the same as back then, that feeling of being lost deep in summer, a jungle of light and languorousness.
Next door, the Portugese woman is playing some music. I can't tell what though. Sounds like something old, a jazz outfit fronted by someone who sounds like Nick Cave. Summer soundtrack, sums up these timeless days perfectly.
A slight breeze rustles a plastic bag in my room, the sounds of people on the street below, laughing. Some kind of plane in the sky. Taxis. Children.
The summer coninues.
I could be back in Worcester again, in those two summers I spent there, walking back along the canal in the August of 1997. I had been down to visit Mina, sometime in August, locked in deep summer, then the train back to Worcester, taking a short cut along the canal to the house back on London Road. Passing the Commandery, Harrys Wines, up the slope of London Road hill.
There was only Alistair, Paul and myself in the house that summer. Stretched out onto four storeys, rambling corridors, a ragged garden, the taste of dust and dreaminess in all the rooms. Paul worked as a computer programmer and Alistair, over the summer anyway before university started again, worked in the Kays factory, where everyone seemed to work, at least that summer.
Alistair would get home early afternoon, and sit in the playroom and write songs on his guitar. I could see him through the corrugated perspex of the playroom roof from my room. beyond the playroom, the long garden, and the long dead and rusted car by the shed where the next summer I was to find a book of poems written by a schoolgirl in Kuala Lumpa.
Across the road to the shops 'Pause for Thought' to get dinner, usually a cheap pizza, and the evenings often spent in the garden listening to the Cranes and And Also The Trees.
I would stay awake long into the small hours drifting and night-dreaming in the labyrinthine house. Paul on the floor above me, and Alistair in the room below. We would wait for everyone else to come back, for the second year to start. Those empty rooms waiting for occupants.
Thirteen years ago.
I'm going to have a quick shower, then meet Alistair (amongst others) at the Meeting Place Cafe on the seafront. The heat is the same as back then, that feeling of being lost deep in summer, a jungle of light and languorousness.
Next door, the Portugese woman is playing some music. I can't tell what though. Sounds like something old, a jazz outfit fronted by someone who sounds like Nick Cave. Summer soundtrack, sums up these timeless days perfectly.
A slight breeze rustles a plastic bag in my room, the sounds of people on the street below, laughing. Some kind of plane in the sky. Taxis. Children.
The summer coninues.
Anti-Summer Manifesto
Walked into town yesterday and felt my limbs were made of concrete. A slight headache and a feeling of utter, utter exhaustion, like I was coming down with something. Not coming down with anything though, only that annual summer fever.
I like summer because it means I can be outdoors, but it comes with a price, and that price, for me anyway, is this summer fever. I think I don't react well to the heat, or rather, the humid heat. Makes my body feel all troubled and unquiet, and makes me wish I could just float about like a spirit until autumn.
An unpopular view of course. Everyone I know loves summer, and I like it too, but not as much as autumn or spring, or even the early part of winter. Summer doesn't feel like home.
Everything seems so stagnant in summer too. The morning is the same as lunchtime is the same as afternoon is the same as evening. Then there are a few short hours of night which just feel the same as day except without the light.
Being outside in summer is good; reading in parks, walking through woods or listening to music at the beach, but being inside is the worst. I really must spend some time inside today, to tidy my bedsit... Nothing cosy about summer inside, just a slightly edgy feeling of needing something else; rain beating against the window, the smoky smell of October afternoons, the racket of the wind in distant streets, the novelty of fresh chill in mouthfuls of September air, adrenalin like that moment before a kiss...
Only two months now until September, until I reach my home country again. Sumnmer is a foreign land to me, and I am starting to long for home.
I like summer because it means I can be outdoors, but it comes with a price, and that price, for me anyway, is this summer fever. I think I don't react well to the heat, or rather, the humid heat. Makes my body feel all troubled and unquiet, and makes me wish I could just float about like a spirit until autumn.
An unpopular view of course. Everyone I know loves summer, and I like it too, but not as much as autumn or spring, or even the early part of winter. Summer doesn't feel like home.
Everything seems so stagnant in summer too. The morning is the same as lunchtime is the same as afternoon is the same as evening. Then there are a few short hours of night which just feel the same as day except without the light.
Being outside in summer is good; reading in parks, walking through woods or listening to music at the beach, but being inside is the worst. I really must spend some time inside today, to tidy my bedsit... Nothing cosy about summer inside, just a slightly edgy feeling of needing something else; rain beating against the window, the smoky smell of October afternoons, the racket of the wind in distant streets, the novelty of fresh chill in mouthfuls of September air, adrenalin like that moment before a kiss...
Only two months now until September, until I reach my home country again. Sumnmer is a foreign land to me, and I am starting to long for home.
Thursday 1 July 2010
Brighton after Midnight and Earlier
The road is calm, and the passing taxis sound muted.
12:22am.
Earlier, on Em's balcony, I watch the hotel across the street. Behind net curtains, a woman turns the 'Vacancies' sign around, and switches off a similar neon sign in the window. She locks the door, and later, three people arrive, an older man and woman, and a younger girl. The same woman inside unlocks the door and ushers them in. They struggle with their luggage. In the obscured but lit hallway, she locks the door again.
Earlier, walking with Em back along the seafront, notice the old pier suddenly vanishing into white. Sea-mist and heat-fog. The tops of buildings vanish and suddenly the pier can't be seen at all. Ghost-snowblind. The fog suddenly clears, but out to sea it lingers over the calm water, clouds floating on frozen waves. The buoys bob like the heads of swimmers.
Earlier, with Tom in the Pavilion Gardens. Telegen ghost. Not spoke to him since in a Worcestershire field, over the phone, half an hour after we had lost our jobs.
Earlier, voices out in the hall of this house of bedsits, and when I left my room, the television that had been out on the landing for months had gone. Leaving the house I saw it, unwieldy an d strangely old fashioned, lying on its side by the communal bins.
Early now. Early July. Half an hour into the seventh month.
This 39th summer continues.
12:22am.
Earlier, on Em's balcony, I watch the hotel across the street. Behind net curtains, a woman turns the 'Vacancies' sign around, and switches off a similar neon sign in the window. She locks the door, and later, three people arrive, an older man and woman, and a younger girl. The same woman inside unlocks the door and ushers them in. They struggle with their luggage. In the obscured but lit hallway, she locks the door again.
Earlier, walking with Em back along the seafront, notice the old pier suddenly vanishing into white. Sea-mist and heat-fog. The tops of buildings vanish and suddenly the pier can't be seen at all. Ghost-snowblind. The fog suddenly clears, but out to sea it lingers over the calm water, clouds floating on frozen waves. The buoys bob like the heads of swimmers.
Earlier, with Tom in the Pavilion Gardens. Telegen ghost. Not spoke to him since in a Worcestershire field, over the phone, half an hour after we had lost our jobs.
Earlier, voices out in the hall of this house of bedsits, and when I left my room, the television that had been out on the landing for months had gone. Leaving the house I saw it, unwieldy an d strangely old fashioned, lying on its side by the communal bins.
Early now. Early July. Half an hour into the seventh month.
This 39th summer continues.
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