Craving the Night-Chill

I left the house at 7:00pm, dragging myself out of an ever deepening evening sleep. I didn't really feel ike going for a walk, but neither did I feel in the mood for painting either.
Twilight had fallen by the time I left the house. A full moon lay in the sky, same blank and beguiling stare as always. I slipped through Brunswick Park down to the sea-front. Blue pools of night creeping out from bushes and below the trees, shadows thick as old summer nights.
The promenade was busy with waklers and cyclists. There were even some people who seemed to be swimming in the dark tides. Stormy looking clouds gathered above the huge building of flats at the end of the seafront. The building always reminds me of some Victorian prison, both dismal and grandiloquent.
I walked past the King Alfred swimming pool, and into new night-territory. I had never been here after dark before. Long rows of beach huts and the undulating sea. Past Mrs Bumbles cafe and the Babylon Lounge, the sea-front becomes more provincial and less polished than Brighton. There are patches of scraggy grass and fenced off wastegrounds. Em and myself saw a used syringe amongst the yellowed weeds here a few weeks ago.
It was my aim to walk to Hove Lagoon at wilight, but by the time I had arrived twilight had gone. Hove Lagoon during the day is a dreary, though somehow dream-like place. In darkness I had expected its atmosphere of January loneliness to only increase. It seemed to show a different side to itself after dark though. Lookng over the playground and past the cafe into the dark waters, it seemed somehow serene and slightly magical, like a theme park ride waiting to open.
I was disappointed.
I headed up to Portland Road and turned right to circle back home.
Portand Road proved to be far more interesting, another place I have never walked at night before.
Endless fish'n'chips and fast food joints, tawdry and appealing. Chinese restaurants standing empty. From one, a model of a wooden horse startled me. Demonic face and rictus grin, an equine nightmare. A dress shop called 'Eternal', 'Tech-u-lke' selling computers. Empty stretches of what appeared to be a business solely dedicaed to selling floorboards. Across the road a vacuum cleaner shop.
It could have been a street in Worcester, or maybe Southampton. Devoid of poetry but somehow real, and old. Older than Brighton's tourist-cool and picturesque lanes. A place where faling in love might be real. I love Brighton but sometimes it seems to be all style and no substance.
I passed by a nameless recreation ground, a great rectangle of darkness surrounded by houses. The pavement was covered with fallen leaves. Here, at least, there were real signs of autumn.
I slipped up to the Old Shoreham Road, passed the petrol station where I used to work. I tried to see if Mike was still there, but I couldn't make the figure out. Too many bright lights and cars in the way. It felt like I had never worked there, the petrol statin slipping further and further into the past. Memories like ghosts, like dreams you can't recall.
On my way back I walked by Andy's flat, empty until he returns on Friday. I tried to remember all the times I had walked this road regularly before, with varying degrees of success.
I have lived in Brighton so long now. It seems I have too many histories here, and it is getting harder to remember them all.
The walk, about four miles in all, tired me out. I was actually warm, almost too warm by the time I returned home.
I am beginning to crave the night-chill of autumn.