Monday 28 July 2014
Dark at 9:00pm (We'll never see Midsummer 2014 again)
When I left work tonight at 9:00pm, it was just about dark. There was a fading band of red on the horizon, but that was all. The nights are drawing in. Fragments of autumn leaking backwards.
Thursday 24 July 2014
The Summer Deeps
These are the summer deeps.
The summer deeps are different from deep summer, which refers specifically to a stretch of time (the end of July to the end of August). The summer deeps really refer to a 'classic' summer - days and days of blazing heat, of waking up in the morning and tasting that metallic air, glimpsing the blue sky between the curtains from (as in my case) the mattress on the floor.
There are other symptoms of the summer deeps though - notable a feeling of tropical darkness. This is a rather vague symptom, and really can only be felt truly at night (though the air of some tangled jungle may well last through the day). As night falls one can almost see huge trees outlined against the sunsetty sky, hear the calls of monstrous insects from carnivorous undergrowth. One could get lost here. Welcome to the summer deeps.
One thing the summer deeps have in common with deep summer is that feeling that no other season could possible exist. Spring and autumn seem a lifetime away, and winter might as well be a fairy-tale, (though as I get older the thought of winter comes with a shiver of concern - another year gone, another year wasted, another year closer to death).
Em is down for the weekend. She sits next to me on the sofa. I can hear the sound of workmen in the mews below, and the sky (seen over the roofs of the flats opposite) is indeed a pale, cloudless blue.
A classic sky of the summer deeps.
The summer deeps are different from deep summer, which refers specifically to a stretch of time (the end of July to the end of August). The summer deeps really refer to a 'classic' summer - days and days of blazing heat, of waking up in the morning and tasting that metallic air, glimpsing the blue sky between the curtains from (as in my case) the mattress on the floor.
There are other symptoms of the summer deeps though - notable a feeling of tropical darkness. This is a rather vague symptom, and really can only be felt truly at night (though the air of some tangled jungle may well last through the day). As night falls one can almost see huge trees outlined against the sunsetty sky, hear the calls of monstrous insects from carnivorous undergrowth. One could get lost here. Welcome to the summer deeps.
One thing the summer deeps have in common with deep summer is that feeling that no other season could possible exist. Spring and autumn seem a lifetime away, and winter might as well be a fairy-tale, (though as I get older the thought of winter comes with a shiver of concern - another year gone, another year wasted, another year closer to death).
Em is down for the weekend. She sits next to me on the sofa. I can hear the sound of workmen in the mews below, and the sky (seen over the roofs of the flats opposite) is indeed a pale, cloudless blue.
A classic sky of the summer deeps.
Wednesday 16 July 2014
The Eye on the Power Station Chimney
Mornings sat waiting to go to work. Heat. Sun.
Watch the breeze blowing through trees from the 7th floor window of the call centre.
Viaduct trains.
Walk back along the beach.
Cool twilights both full of summer and autumnal premonitions.
The eye on the power station chimney.
A cyclops god in a land of locks, factories, lost quarries, docks and floodlights.
Watch the breeze blowing through trees from the 7th floor window of the call centre.
Viaduct trains.
Walk back along the beach.
Cool twilights both full of summer and autumnal premonitions.
The eye on the power station chimney.
A cyclops god in a land of locks, factories, lost quarries, docks and floodlights.
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