12-1-2022: Day 216
The clear plastic sheet dividers hanging between the tables in the Tom Foolery coffee shop reminded me of a scene in the sci-fi classic movie Alien. It reminded me of the scene when the dribbling extra-terrestrial peers round the corner, in the petrified eyeline of the heroine Sigourney Weaver.
There was something clinical, surgical even, about these dividers – to stop unwanted alien dribble and Virus contamination spreading patrons, but on a sunny January lunchtime it felt like disinfectant overkill.
On the table to my right, a scruffy pair of little dogs were scrapping, scratching table legs, and yapping at the feet of queuing customers. One puked up, a yellow pool of canine vomit, as the owner went a shade of lobster.
To my right, a multi-coloured buggy park, with an extended table of gossiping young mums were wiping down alien babies with wet wipes and chewing the fat.
It all felt a bit normal – the eye of the storm in the lunchtime rush – people out and about, unmasked, unmoved by sky-high Viral bar graphs, media fear trolling quotients, or a steady drip of Omicron obituaries.
14-1-2022: Day 218
It was the night of eternal sunshine of the mind. I was wired to the max. Whether this was down to the meds or a recent tweak to the dose, there was no sleep on the cards. I was buzzing, consumed, and intoxicated from the ethereal hankering of light energy from a Lee Harris broadcast.
As I lay there, waiting for the first false dawn chorus of seagulls soaring overhead, my mind searching for Z’s, I realised there was no sleep till breakfast. So, I slipped on my slippers, trudged downstairs, and powered up my handheld device.
In the dark, illuminated by the phone light, I pondered my relationship with my powerful palm computer – niggling over issues of mental health, sleep hygiene, and whether it was respectable to plug into social networks at 3 am GMT on the internet surf that never sleeps.
Either way, I passed the nocturnal buck on a wholesale admission of addiction, deciding instead to hammer out some words while waiting for the endless night to end.
17-1-2022: Day 221
So, I pulled up a pew on one of the mossy benches, near a mossy flagstone grave, in the mossy graveyard of St Mary’s church, bang in the middle of Shoreham town centre. The light was dancing, the penetrating midday sun peeking over the roof of the church. Squirrels were running up and down the tree trunks and the birds were pecking at scraps of bread left by an old dear busy filling out her day.
I felt a deep well of peace and serenity seated by the perimeter wall of the graveyard. I was studying the way the gravestones lean, bow, and distort – like an odd giant domino set.
People stroll through the churchyard, with little nods to dead ancestors, doffing imaginary caps to the elderly citizens sitting in the sunshine wondering when their time is up for the great leap into the unknown. And I watch a pair of magpie’s dancing in the sunshine on a cracked memorial headstone.