Where the Year Starts to End

Last afternoon at work today before the Christmas holidays, which have now began.
In the boardroom at work this afternoon. Five of us in that huge space, leather chairs and emptiness. Think of all those meetings and grey suits and sharply ironed trousers that have been in there. Ghosts of high level board meetings and power point displays on the screen behind the wooden shutters. Something from a Victorian spaceship.
I am only ever in there for small meetings like the one this afternoon, so the room always feels conspicuously empty. kept glancing behind me at Brighton, a new place seen from the eighth floor - where is that church on the hill? Where are those trees? Distant hills of the Sussex Downs, dark intimations of that countryside beyond.
Sunset all subtle and gold. Catch glimpses of twilight creeping up through the streets, blue-silver flow, like water lit by moons. Go to the toilet and come back. Day gone. Twilight gone. Brighton in blackness outside. Night down in what seems seconds.
This is where the year starts to end, I think, and now I am home, work already seems a lifetime away.