It was already twilight when I left the house. I headed down the seafront first of all, then headed up to Portslade, then up to the Old Shoreham Road. I took a road - a long uphill thing - that took me to the edge of town. Old houses - mock Tudor style - set back from the road. Beyond them I could see the dark mass of Three Cornered Copse. Wouldn't like to be there at night. I then sort of turned back on myself down Tongdean Lane. The road twisted round on itself. Here is a lonely place. Rich, newly built houses, set in the own patch of land away from each other. Between the sparse buildings and the trees, I could look down onto the east side of Brighton.
The place was beginning to unnerve me, and I was glad to pass by the old football ground at Withdean and found myself on familiar old London Road, where I walked down to Preston Manor, and took a right up that huge slope that leads to Dyke Road, and then back onto the Old Shoreham Road and home again.
Everything felt Decembrous. A made up word of course, but the endless landscape of cold and mysterious wintry houses is summed up in it. Decembrous, tenebrous. A few trees still cast the last of their leaves down. Feverish snow. Exiled from the houses and out in the darkness I felt some kind of melancholy, both familiar and comforting.
Another month and we'll be halfway through this decade.
