Lost Things

Even as it becomes more real, it moves further away.
I have never seen
the distance looking so sharp.

A narrow season of narrow rooms,
condensation panes
strange hallways.

Pauses walking home.
These streets know absence.
To choose is to move

through cement
through concrete
through too many lost things.

Last day of the Unemployment Period

The last day of the unemployment period, no matter what happens in the new job, is here.
Last night's storm was ultimately disappointing, and this morning it seems to be a beautiful sunny, but slightly damp and breezy autumn day. I slept well, though had many dreams that I can't now remember.
The sky really is quite blue out there.
It seems both like yesterday and a lifetime ago that I left the old call centre. I remember that day - it was grey and breezy, and after I had left I bought some fish'n'chips and ate them at the beach whilst listening to one of the two 'Deaf Centre' albums I had recently downloaded. The next day I caught the train to Worcester, had a walk round old haunting grounds, then got picked up by my parents. The next day I was flying to Portland, Oregon for my cousin James' wedding.
The first couple of weeks after I came back were doused deep in summer - I would still get up early in the morning - go for a long walk and end up having a coffee at the beach. I didn't know what was going to happen in the future but it was too early to worry about it.
This state of affairs lasted until the middle of September until a Saturday where I helped Sarah set up some of her stuff for a Japanese exhibition in the morning, and in the evening went round to Genevieve and Kate's house for dinner. Between the two events I set up the Witch Factory facebook page for my artwork and began a long period of savage depression which I have not fully emerged from yet.
(fragments) - up all night reading threads on urban exploration websites / drawing in coffee shops both elated and uncomfortable / afternoon teas and crosswords with Em, meeting her at Sainsburys on Portland Road / Uxbridge town centre, even in the sun draped in wintry mystery / waking with anxiety in my gut that wouldn't leave the whole day
I wonder how I shall think of the past two months in years to come?

Thinking of Leaving Here

The factory still operates, though its production system is now in its afterlife. Machinery still operates - though there are fewer and fewer workers - and no-one is interested in tending to these machines that make nothing. Air and wind and grime, and lost corners, petrol smell and oily skin, and no skin.
Outside the factory, the air is empty, and I think of leaving here forever.

Inky Gaze

Alone in the house last night, I busy myself with a drawing.
The drawing is of a purposefully fictional face. This is a drawing of a woman who has never existed. It is a windy night. Sudden squalls of rain add to the air of foreboding as we all wait for the big storm to come - due today apparently.
The drawing begins to unnerve me. I can feel her large eyes looking up at me. I'm not sure whether her inky gaze is malevolent or imploring.  I began to imagine she possessed the baleful qualities of some kind evil fairy tale witch. The flat began to imperceptibly alter itself, becoming haunted. Banging doors, rattling cat-flap, wind like voices overheard at 3:00am.

Lonely Saturday Morning

With Em away for the weekend, and everyone else busy today, the prospect of a lonely Saturday rises up. A slight panic pops its head up somewhere; how did my regular social group get whittled down to so few people? Like most people, I have more acquaintances than friends. It seems that as I get older I have more and more acquaintances and fewer friends. What happens if Em moves away? People move on and get on with their lives. Life eats them up, leaves others oddly stranded. I wonder if this is how a lonely old age starts?
Growing older - even into middle age - is sometimes frightening.
Sat in my room, waiting for the storm that's said to come. I can hear some distant rumbling like the sea. The air feels damp and dark yellow. There is something subterranean about this day.
My last weekend before I start a new job on Wednesday; on the phones as a charity fundraiser, so it's goodbye to this unemployment period - for a bit anyway. I don't know how successful I'm going to be.
What shall I do now? Sleep for a bit? Watch television? Go for a walk into town? I've never really fancied town on a Saturday, and I'm not even in the middle of a drawing I can take to a coffee shop... I'll probably flick restlessly through the internet, flick through old comics and new books, flick these minutes away... wait for the melancholy to come, as it inevitably will.
It's only 11:18am as well.

The Sun will Set at 4:43pm

Morning - Bright October sun - clear and laced through with something fluid. Slightly hungover I wandered into town listening to Death In June's last two albums.
When the sun goes in, a chill comes down. Later, on the beach, I think of sleeping on the stones, but that that wind - that wind is a premonition of January. Those long stretched out weeks preceding when I will have my 42nd birthday.
I read online (once I would have read this in a newspaper) that the clocks go back this weekend.
The sun will set at 4:43pm.

Sea Predictions

Lets divine something from the sea.
Earlier, I linger over a coffee in the cafe on the edge of George Street. I continue working on the drawing of a stag standing in an impossible tangle of undergrowth. The cafe is noisy with Sunday afternoon people, the overspill of late shoppers from the supermarket, the charity shops, the newsagents.
The coffee does not help my hangover, and a sudden storm of rain puts me in mind of floods and launderettes and petrol stations submerged in a dream-undertow, the Old Shoreham Road, only accessible now by submarines and sea monsters.
The rain clears, and the sun comes out, and I leave the cafe to it's last hour before closing.
As I intimated, I wander down to the sea.
The seafront is less busy that it would be normally, though is by no means deserted. I stand on the edges of the waves, on the stones, the pebbles, watch the spindrift horses, the choppy un-rhythms of foam and pulsing tide. The sun - low in the sky - makes the waves cast autumnal shadows. Strange clairvoyance, unreadable predictions. A presentience of times that twist away from us. Somewhere impossible.
I would have waited till it had got dark, till the city lights behind me had flickered on, but the wind is up, and drowns out the silence I wish to dwell in.
I walk home, and already it is twilight.

This Room feels like Footsteps

2:00am, and there are miles and miles of dark roads between here and London; silent fields and locked meadow, the pylon-song in some rain I cannot hear here.
From old windows I used to watch lights flicker in the trees, a window of a house I never remembered to look for in day. Winding branches, blue sky of early mornings, and getting ready to travel home.
My voice in the night, a name tumbling out of the open window, rolling like dice in the slope of the streets for some river-deep season. I think of all those places I know in day, but would not dream of knowing at night. Not this late. Three Cornered Copse, Freezewood Covert, Perry Hill Woods.
Messages and signals.
This room feels like footsteps.

Calmed in Ickenham, Spooked in Uxbridge (Adventures into Nostalgic Twilight)

The tube pulled into Uxbridge Station at about 4:00pm - a little earlier than I had hoped, but better than getting there too late. I hoped to be able to time everything so that I would hit Woodstock Drive - where I lived from 1985 - 1993 - at twilight.
I had an hour or two in Uxbridge first - a nowhere town at the very end of the Metropolitan line. Places don't change that much I've discovered - a building may get knocked down here maybe, another one gets put up there perhaps.
Places from the past are a lot more consistent than people.
Well, nearly.
I went into W.H.Smiths where I used to work from 1990 - 1993, but because it has been refurbished, it felt completely different. I stood in the newspaper section, pretended I was still putting out the magazines from 23 years ago. I went back into the Pavilions shopping centre. Now this place never changes. The book stall in the middle is still here. I worked a couple of shifts here, but wasn't offered the job because I was ' having problems with the till'. That must have been back in 1989... I remember when Louise and Helen both worked here. Helen was going out with Edward, and with Craig and Simon, we would congregate here in Saturdays. I used to fancy Louise, but  never told her. The closest we would get to anything would be holding hands.
I rifled through rows of old 1980s paperbacks.
Slight echoes here.
I wandered into the new shopping centre, along the street to the Civic Centre then circled back again, via Uxbridge College, where I failed my art A-level over 1990 / 1991.
Back in the town centre I went for a coffee as Costa, sat looking out toward the tube station entrance.
I was thoroughly spooked.
I'm not sure why I was spooked, but there was something edgy and wrong about Uxbridge. I can't put my finger on what it was - it wasn't just being back in my own past (though that might have been part of it) it was an air... of something untrustworthy about the place, as if something bad was going to happen. I wanted to be out of there. I could feel an inexplicable panic building up.
Luckily my coffee was decaffeinated.
When that was finished I strolled slowly up to the big Sainsburys, got a sandwich and some apples. I munched on my sandwich at the entrance, looking out over the car park, thinking I used to live here and felt twilight begin to gather.
I walked up Belmont Road, passing by no 83 where I lived when I left home, from 1993 - 1994. A rented room that never saw sunlight on the ground floor. Saw the outside wall of that room. Just got back from Langley College, 21 years old, popped into Sainsburys for dinner, time for a joint and some artwork...
But I couldn't.
20 years ago is too long.

Uxbridge Common was just around the corner.
It was twilight proper when I got there.
And something began to happen.

Twilight out here in suburbia has something compelling about it - an out-of-place serenity, a deep incongruous mystery. Here we are in the suburbs of London, Metroland, a place famed for boredom and nothing, an interzone place as the writer Will Self called it, and I found there was something ancient and almost mystical about it.
I don't remember this feeling from when I lived in the area - eight and a half years is too long for a single emotion to cover everything - there were happy and sad times here, all lain over with a sense, at times, of isolation - my friends tended to live miles away from where I did. I had noticed this sense of serene mystery before, when I came back here two years ago, and also the first return I did, way back in the January of 2006.
Another interesting thing is that when I came here in November last year, that sense of serenity was missing. Perhaps this was because it had been daylight. All I found was a sense of unpleasant melancholy and loss, a geography of regret, a suburb of a city built on depression and sadness. It seems that the mystery and peace, the recompense of this place, is entwined only in the evenings and nights out here. When I walked up Woodstock Road, back over 2011, I thought that it seemed a very kind place. There was an implacable air of benevolence about this road where I lived when I was a teenager.

The above two photographs were taken at the top of Woodstock Drive.
I felt too self-conscious to take any photographs of my old house, so I passed by slowly instead, searching the blank windows for something, noting the willow tree in the garden was still living and voluminous (I could have sworn that it had died). I noticed that the back door light was on. Do I remember a back door light or has that been a recent addition? Oh what I would do to knock on the door, say to whoever's living there now that the house has haunted me for twenty years and more, and that I have frequent dreams of being back in the house at twilight or sunset, that the empty rooms are haunted by something that knows me...
Walking by the house, in the surreal twilight, felt like I was actually in one of those dreams. A nostalgia for a place that doesn't exist, but is somehow real. I couldn't ever imagine living here.
I walked up Swakeleys Road, passed by the Swakeleys Park, Swakeleys Manor, a trinity of Swakeleys. I glance down the overgrown path that led to the rope-swing that was there over the summer of 1986. I brush fingers over all those still familiar landmarks from walks back home from school. That tree, that crooked street lamp, that front garden. A sense of euphoria crept into the darkness, a sense of rightness. There is something beautiful about a suburban night; houses lost and comfortable in their front gardens, the rumours of vast back gardens hidden behind trees, a lane leading to a tennis club (floodlights above the chimneys), avenues curving off into safe darkness. Suburbia - or this suburbia at least - has so much more potential for mystery and secrecy than Brighton does.
I got to Hillingdon tube station, waited for the tube back to London and to home and the present day. Behind me was an unlit footpath, muddy and lost, and I couldn't work out where it came from or where it was going to.

Night Sighs

Because I didn't get up until midday yesterday, I find it difficult to get to sleep last night. I eventually do fall asleep, or at least fall into a light doze. At some point I realize I am awake. There is a sudden sound in the darkness of the flat, making the silence around it even more profound. I ignore it, but then it comes again. It is like a very quick sigh - the sound, perhaps, of a chimney expelling short puffs of steam. The sound comes regularly. I cannot quite work out what it is. I settle on the theory that it must be Andy in his room. Some kind of snoring noise. There are two closed doors between us though, and the sound seems closer than that, too regular for a human sleep-sigh, but there is undeniably something very unnerving about the sound. I think of turning on the light to dispel my nerves, but fall asleep instead, to the piston-like sigh of that undetermined night-noise.

Coffee Shop

Slightly hungover, I don't leave the house till 3:00pm. It is raining, a dreamy autumnal gloom, though not heavy enough to be irritating. There is something almost protective and comforting about the light drizzle.
I go to George Street first to pick up Fortean Times annual 'mag-book' (as they call it) of real-life paranormal tales called 'It Happened To Me'. On volume 6 now. Another autumnal ritual - I've been getting them since they first came out, back in the autumn of 2008 when I was still living in the hallowed walls of 35 Wilbury Crescent. Afterwards I went to Tescos. As I stepped in, a voice came over the tannoy, warning us that we all had ten minutes to spare before the store closed. A great intensity over the shoppers, and I rushed around; tins of peas, baked potatoes, slices of Leerdammer light cheese...
I considered going home when I got out but instead walked nearly into town and went into the Starbucks down Western Road. It was crowded with foreign students; Polish women talking quickly, the halting tones of an Italian woman out on a first date. A woman with short hair, looking Eastern European in a pleasing Soviet-Block era way, sat opposite me and played with her phone. She looked nostalgic for snow and ice and monochrome days.
After flicking through 'It Happened To Me volume 6' I took out my sketchbook and spent a relatively productive hour continuing the present drawing, called 'Under Surveillance') of a man in the pose of Gaughin's female figure in 'Nevermore', while  behind him, a dark woodland broods (based on Cluny Woods in Forres).
The last of my coffee was drunk cold.
I walked home slowly through the rainy early twilight. If it hadn't been raining I might have walked for longer.

Lonely Autumnal Day

After Em had popped over for a cup of tea, I took a walk to Tescos. I had hoped to go for a longer walk but it was unpleasant weather. Aside from Em I saw no-one else all day.
It rained all day too, so I elected to stay in, drawing, drifting from room to room. An afternoon nap. Rewatching 'My Tattoo Addiction' for the third time. Andy slept all day, then went out in the evening. The day crept on till midnight, and it still rained, and the wind started rattling all the doors, and I had to stuff CD cases under the frames which only kind of worked.

Upstairs in the Comic Shop

Dave's Comics is one of my favourite shops. I rarely go into the new comics section (a room upstairs) as I like old comics. Sometimes a new release comes out, or a reprint of old comics, or just out of interest, and I descend into this tiny room of superheroes and that glossy smell of modern comics...
Much as I love Dave;s Comics, the upstairs room is a nightmare of too many comics in a too small space. Things seem to be fine-tuned regularly, and comics seem to move about every now and again. I know where the DC and Marvel comics are, but the indie comics seem to shift their positioning in the indie comics section... This has meant that I missed out on the last issue of Haunted Horror and couldn't find yesterday's issue of Afterlife with Archie. Of course, I could just ask someone who works there, who are always unfailingly helpful, but that would just be too easy wouldn't it?

October is the Sky

I left the house at about 5:00pm yesterday to meet Sarah and Ingrid for dinner at the Basketmakers. I had worked on a drawing all day so this was the first time I left the house.
The sky was October - it summed up everything about this month, It was a deep blue, and that blue ribbed with clouds. The sun was low in the sky, a sleepy gold that made shadows look like being eight years old and looking forward to Hallowe'en. It was still too warm (I had to take my jacket off within five minutes of leaving) but there was a coolness - somewhere - in the air.

The Lost Book

Sometime in the past - I think it was early 2007 - I bought a book I never got around to reading. I couldn't even tell you what it was about (I had read a little and the back cover blurb) but seemed to be some kind of dream-like narrative, something about steps and a secret street. In my mind, I associate the book with those first few warm days of spring, where things open up after long grey winters.
I'm not sure what happened to the book - lost in a move, or perhaps given to a charity shop. I barely remembered the book. Lately I begun thinking about the book again. Because I could remember so little of it, the book began to achieve a mythic resonance in my mind. Was this a lost classic? I began to suspect that - as I had so little information on the book - that I had dreamt it up, and was never real book at all. I didn't know the author, the title. All I remembered was it had a kind of grey cover.
I came across the book in Waterstones yesterday on there sales shelf - the book exists and is called 'Days Between Stations' and is by Steve Erickson, published in 1985 first.
I wonder whether I'll get around to reading it this time.

Back Spaces

The backs of places yield strange angles, occult spaces that may be conducive to childhood myths and daydreams; alleyways, footbridges, stairs, a courtyard that, when glimpsed, may seems somehow Mediterranean. Even Brighton and Hove (most of these shots were taken in Hove), that city of surfaces and angles and no-trees, have these portals to far more interesting countries. Countries within countries. Practical wasteground, people passing through and never stay... Places half-sinister and half-comforting...
It felt like Sunday yesterday, I'm not sure why. Was one of those days beautiful and melancholy, because it surely must be one of the last few hot days of the year (though it looks fairly sunny out there this morning).
I passed through a number of places I would pass by regularly - on my way to work or home - those liminal spaces we never really notice at the time.
There was something of sleep about them, some soporific air, heavy as narcotic or waking weighed down in the depths of winter and falling slowly down into sleep again.

Bad Latin and Winning the Pub Quiz

My team won the Geekest Link last night. I was actually helpful for once. These are the questions I helped with:
In what TV programme would you find the Cybernauts? (The Avengers)
How many K9s have there been? (4)
In the picture-round successfully identified David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth
Who carried Dr Theopolis? (I identified the programme as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which prompted Colin to give the answer 'Twiki).
My share of the winnings was £5:00. I was very pleased.

The toilet in the Caroline of Brunswick is full of goth / metal graffiti, of a rather adolescent flavour. Somebody had written in latin (they had provided a helpful translation underneath) 'let the banners of Hades ride forth'. This was written in felt pen in a 'scary' medieval font. Someone heard me complaining about the 'bad latin' and informed me that it wasn't bad Latin, but the writer had 'got the verbs the wrong way round'.
For some reason I didn't believe that he knew anything about Latin either.

House of Hooks and Nails

Yesterday was a day of sleep, or a state akin to sleep.
It wasn't that I was hungover, but I just felt incapable of doing anything. I did finish one drawing, and finally started another. Aside from that the day was spent in a twilight zone. I didn't even leave the house. Exhaustion-euphoria, a day-dream drift.
The house is full of nails. They were left there by the previous tenants. Stuck in every wall, used to hang pictures on. They must have had an awful lot of pictures. We've lived in this flat for over two years now, and I still discover new nails.
There is a hook on the hallway wall I have only recently noticed. I can't see what it could be used for - the gate at the top of the stairs swings open the other way. Andy said that he has only noticed the hook over the last couple of weeks as well.
It seems the house is spontaneously generating these things. I wonder if we'll find any more,

Another Bad Taxi Driver

I don't remember the taxi ride home from the pub. I vaguely remember Andy and me talking - trying to talk - to the taxi driver. Not getting anywhere. Down New Church Road. Hmm, Looks a bit unfamiliar. The meter read £10 which is usually how much it costs to get back. We said to drop us where we are... which was ten minutes away from where we lived. This is the second time a Brighton taxi driver was unable to take us home. At least this one didn't cost us £26 like the one before...

Damp Churchyard

I signed on at the job-centre this morning. The woman I saw looked both like a penguin and someone who has worked in the job centre since the 1980s, despite the fact that she couldn't be older than 25.
Afterwards (not even 9:20am!) I thought that I might go to the churchyard down New Church Road and do some drawing. Over summer it is wonderfully over grown, and like some relic from a Victorian M.R.James-esque ghost story.
I walked around the church. There was a damp, unpleasant air about it all. No benches, and hanging from the trees, monstrous crab-like spiders (shades of M.R.James again... The Ash Tree?). A group of two old men and women on the other side looked deep in discussion.
I headed down the beach instead, thinking to get a coffee from Mrs Bumbles and draw on the stones.
The sky soon clouded up. Thick banks of grey like oncoming depression. Cold drops. Maybe it would clear up? Heavier and heavier. I cut back up onto New Church Road, tried to shelter under trees. Watched the cars pass by, the muted light of October and came home.

Unreal Street

I went for a short walk (hour and a half) last night listening to Tor Lundvall's album 'Turning' Leaves were spat down from trees, and the darkness had that deep, sinewy quality to it that denotes we are moving ever deeper into autumn. There was about the air though, an incredibly strong feeling of early spring, those first few warm nights. Breathe in and taste that electricity of old potentials...

Toward the end of my walk I ended up taking a street down to the seafront I had never taken before. This street was amazing - all the houses were large and detached (three of four storeys) and were all painted white. No colours anywhere. There were no, or very little in the way of front gardens. It all gave it a very dream-like feel, as if I were walking through a strange district of a Mediterranean country. The white against the night-blue of the sky was quite startling.

Flat Light

A flat light has softened - hidden - all angles. Down at the beach, a voracious sleepiness came over me. The pebbles shifted and warped. I imagined I could see a ghost ship on the slight white-out of the waves. The cold wind, forerunner of winter, pricked me to wakefulness.
I came home and though I would sleep, but I lay on my mattress and was unable to. I wished to be back at the sea again, breathing in that clammy air, watching the unreal sea, that lugubrious horizon. I longed for Brighton to have a lighthouse but we do not.
My sleep was full of dreams of cold corridors and abandoned hospitals last night. They lay about me like the petals of a flower. I thought I would remember the dreams when I woke, but apart from that nonsensical image I remembered nothing.

Six Minutes and Deep in October

Welcome to October.
Six minutes in now.
Definitely not summer. September isn't really summer, though it can be a bit ambiguous. This September certainly so. October can in no way be summer. A season after the one in which I left work.
October has always been my favourite month, and October is a huge moon, milky white bone hanging over daylight fields. The coolness of those afternoons promising much.
Whistling with mysteries.
We're deep here. Deep, deep, deep.