11pm is the New Midnight

11pm is the new midnight. Sat on my sofa against the window. The curtains are broken, somehow, and through the now-uneven material, the sound of cars and voices, already half-drunk on a Wednesday night. Seagulls too, an echo from the small hours of last summer.
The night feels wet and black. A day of white drizzle and white clouds. The edges of everything fading away, an attic-entropy. The lofty heights of buildings decapitated, the end of the sea softened and tideless and boatless. Struck by the silence of the waves. That double-glazing silence again.
I dreamt last night of 136 London Road in Worcester. Corin was living in the basement living room. A cosy windowless place of cushions and sofas. In the dream I couldn't believe that I had returned and was allowed back in the house. The entrance to an adjoining room boarded up. Rumours of something there that no-one talked about.
I slipped in the rain on the way to work this morning. That dizzying moment of panic as balance falls away. Then that curious resignation, those seconds stretched to hours. Landing with some grace and little injury but no dignity. A middle-aged woman asks if I am okay before disappearing into a building where she works. It looked like she was fleeing me.
At my feet are scattered old horror comics from the 1970s, paintbrushes, erasers, a mobile phone and a bottle of ink.
A page torn out of a new sketchbook because I could not wait for the ink to dry and smudged the face irreparably of a 1950s style woman. Her eyes glance away, do not meet mine. The first drawing I had attempted in a while. The new sketchbook, already harmed. A guilty object, bad omen.
It all used to flow so freely but the ink just seems to clog these days.

London, Royston and Halfway Between Everywhere

A busy weekend. After I finish work on Saturday, I catch the train to London. I was on my way to see my sister, recently a mother to Charlotte, in the town of Royston, halfway between London and Cambridge. I elected to spend a few hours in London first, finally making it to '30th Century Comics' in a surprisingly leafy and pleasant Putney. I leave 30th century Comics £51 lighter, but my bag is now heavy with horror comics. Vintage echoes, cheap artwork. I buy a couple I used to own but have lost.

I flick through them. Back to the summer of 1985. Horror comics are time machine. I wonder where the originals went? Lost in some eternal attic, some hungry threshold spaces that swallows up bits of our lives when we're not looking.

Only later when we realise what we've lost.
I like Putney, the vast swathe of the Thames cutting through it. A church hidden behind voluminous trees, and somewhere, a wedding, I keep seeing wedding guests popping out of some unknown hotel for cigarettes.

Notting Hill Gate afterwards, then Oxford Street. A strange glee comes over me. A mixture of euphoria and exhaustion. This could have be any time. Oxford Street never changes. The dark record shops of Berwick Street, then through Soho to Picadilly Circus. This might once have been a threatening place.
There are theatres everywhere. And alleyways. Accidental spaces that grow between buildings. Grey shadowy areas, an interzone for the obscure.
I like London.

The train to Royston.

Flat countryside and something strange about the landscape. Remniscent of some other time. The summery fields and clustered trees on the horizon. Little stations for towns I can't remember now. What would it be like to live here, in this maze of garden cities and commuter colonies?

The blue of the sky, fading to dusk.
A nostalgia for train journeys.

I meet my niece, four weeks old. She looks constantly surprised at everything, and when she sleeps, she looks as if she has put a lot of effort into it. I wonder what she dreams of in her dream-life not yet a month old?

After my sister and Mum have gone to bed, I make a cup of tea and open the window in the spare room where I am to sleep on an air-mattress. My sister lives on a street next to a railway station. There is some noise in a pub near the station. My sister's road is lit by bright white lamps, and this makes it seem an airport, some 24 hour environment which is devoid of people.

An airport for voices.

On Sunday morning I go to the newsagent. I can't get used to the silent streets, the lack of people. Royston seems abandoned, as if some great disaster has occurred and the residents have all fled. A post-apocalyptic suburbia, an armageddon under grey and leaden English skies. Another liminal place, generating an aura of desolation. An emptiness that is almost palpable. It tastes of gloomy spring drizzle and slight headaches on school day Sunday afternoons. Everyone here belongs either to London or Cambridge.

Back at my sister's house, I look at the garden. At the leaves rustling in the wind. Double-glazing silence. Oddly hypnotic, their fluttering and silent movements. Woodstock Drive memories. Adolescence and staring out of the window at similarly silent leaves under grey and unfriendly skies. I read in the local paper about a cave in Royston that was discovered in the 17th century. It is covered with religous iconography, not all of which is identifiable. No-one knows the purpose of this mysterious chapel, this nameless grotto. I read about an ongoing project called 'The Royston Tapestry, which 'when finished will rival The Bayeux Tapestry in its skill and originality.'

I nearly fall about laughing, but I am left quite quite speechless.

On Sunday afternoon, catching the train back to London, I nearly fall asleep. Train rhythm nudging me to dream and nostalgia. A nearly deja-vu. The hypnotic passage of the fields, and as the train slows round a curve, I see a path run through a field and vanish into a thick and clustered wood, and I nearly remember something.

But it is gone.

I am glad to see Emily at Brighton Station, but I am sad the weekend away is over.

I sleep well and before I know it it is Monday morning.

The alarms startles me from a dream I can't remember.

17:53

The Bedsit.
The lamp is on because I left it on all day. Accidentally of course. I really should turn it off now.
I sit on my bed with a copy of the Guardian and the sleeve of Manilla Road's 'The Deluge' album, from 1986.
On the floor, DVD covers for The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Metroland.
I must look at train times to Royston, but this is not fun, so I stare instead at the lamp I really must switch off, but can't be bothered to do.
17:55 now.