Tuesday 29 January 2013

And I guess it's not really appropriate to call this A Bristol Novella.

At Embankment I make a right and then a right and a final right, lifting the dead weight of my legs, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27. Does the top step count. A question I always ask. And I'm standing on the bridge, looking at the lights and the polluted sky, and the stark, washed out, white dome of St Paul's. The moon kissed boats, bottles, buildings, half crescent faces of tourists. I'm listening to a Japanese man, who cant be more than 45, command his girlfriend - wife?- how to frame a photograph, and someone talks at me and a camera is held to my face, and I'm just staring, trying to blot out the noise, hands glued to my side.

And in the cool night air I just walk, the chill waking me with the smell of cinnamon, stake alcohol, piss. And I'm on South bank and ironically, I don't have an destination and I just walk, staring into the night.

At a taxi cab, blue, three months previous, the driver loads three bags; one a red holdall, into the boot. "23 degrees" a interaction I choose to ignore.

As the cab pulls away, over the raised drains and various characteristics of the hot summer tarmac the Wills Memorial building, framed by the cab window, starts to shrink and ripple as heat from the pavement distorts the image. Adele Someone Like You plays, clichéd, over the radio, and I push the headphones of my iPhone into my ears, and stare blankly through the cool glass, the shadow, the shop fronts, through buildings and people, and the floor starts to distort and melt, and it all melts, and my eyes roll and shut as I grab the jesus-handle and a calm surgical white rushed through me, and I feel free.