Equations involving Nine Years

Everything is January. January is everything.
On this, the last day of the Christmas break, I took a walk down the seafront. Made my way there down the forgotten roads between Western Road and the Kingsway (?). The light drained of all depth, an horizonless day. A winter tree, all spiky and dead, nestled in a street corner. Gloomy front gardens backing onto gloomy front rooms. In one, I saw a middle-aged woman sat on her bed, a look of despondency on her face, surrounded by piles of rubbish. Cluttered towers of things that made no sense. I only glimpsed this private view, and quickly turned away. There was something too intrusive about it all.
The grey of the sea. Sluggish tides, and skies that belonged nowhere. I sat and looked at the waves, a part of me wishing I still smoked. People and dogs passed me by. The dogs, as ever, seemed immune to the somehow pleasing glooms of January.
Back in the bedsit now, listening to Orplid on the stereo, an album I bought nine years ago this year. 2002 is now nine years ago. My obsession with making equations out of the past is beginning to tire me now. An unconscious habit, it carries on; so when I bought the Orplid album, that would have been halfway between now and 1993, when I started Langley College, and nine years from now, I'll be 47, and today will be halfway between buying that Orplid album and whatever I'll be doing nine years from now...