It is that in-between Christmas and New Year time. Roughly three years ago I began this journal with a similar sentence, sitting up on that balcony in Victoria station. I miss that time, those evenings, the romantic dreaming of far away places, like Purley Oaks. I had to think carefully then to work out whether it was two years or three. It was before everything changed, the sky was dark, sodium lights hung overhead. Trains made sounds. So it is three years, definitely.
Time is still out of joint. These three years are mixed up, confused. I’ve given up trying to untangle them. Prior times are still intact, just out of reach, as if preserved in a glass cabinet, to be observed from a safe distance, studied. Things, sights, objects, memories from that distance no longer provoke feelings. I don’t know if I want them to. I suppose at the moment I don’t. What good would it do? What good is nostalgia?
The present feels like a transitional time. I suppose I feel unproductive because I am. The present feels temporary, a necessary interim time, a pause. Without obvious direction the future is blank, bleak, open, random. That can be terrifying but is also liberating. I’ve been thinking again today about relocating. The flats in Queens Park appear more attractive, perhaps moving there is inevitable. Living in one space with minimal facilities does not phase me at all. I think I would miss the balcony here, that’s the only negative. I could grow indoor plants. I’d have a bath, for the first time in London, unbelievably. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
I’m at Chiltern Court now, that gateway to the west. I feel more comfortable coming this way now. The view out of the back windows of railway tracks and backs of buildings is evocative. It is full of screeching children but that can’t be helped, it is the season. I don’t really feel that sense of Christmas – New Year calmness, comfort or joy this year. It all feels like a tiresome chore, honestly. Next time – next year, in fact – I will have to go away, rent a tiny cottage somewhere remote. Ignore it all.
A bit later. It is mainly family groups here. Earlier there was a father and three boys, being innocently tactile, hugging, at one point raising tee shirts and scratching each other. I don’t recall being like that at that age, I suppose we were more Victorian and formal in our top hats. Now it’s a family of people in matching bobble hats. If I had a close family I would want to escape. In fact eventually I did.
Andrew Stevenson 