A Collection of Ghosts

2.30 a.m. Wednesday 3rd September 1

Walking along Uxbridge road I hear Rats squabbling in the sewers.
"You're never more than two meters from a Rat in London!"
A Night Bus barrels past drawing with it the fetid road smell of summer city, rubbish and faeces. For some weird reason as I walk though, the night time cool, sodium light and dirty pavements trigger memories of summer haze and the dusty flint smell of back woods Suffolk, that Strange Summer with Her.
And so I come to the reason I'm writing
all this down, going against my own first rule.
I don't trust my memory anymore… Sometimes I'll getflashes of things, but days, sometimes, hours later I can't remember the details.
So I clutched this feeling, held onto it until I could pin it down on paper… 2

She drove me hours along winding country roads never entirely sure of the exact location of our mystery destination.
"I'm sure it's just along here!"
I didn't care. Just being with her at that moment was really all I wanted, direction could take a running jump.
Now though, I really only remember the emotions...
and the sunflowers. And these only because I still have the photographs.
The Sunflower field was beautiful, random, typical of Her. Mile upon mile of golden faces tracking the sun across the cobalt sky. She parked precariously at the
roadside and took pictures, I do remember thinking.
"She's Beautiful"
And She was…
I still find myself wondering where she is now I wonder if she still carries that aura of sadness.
She had so many ghosts. Now she (and her ghosts) are just my ghosts.
That's how I see them all now... my friends, my lovers even Gods help me my family.
Formless drifting collections of loosely associated details, with no framework to hold them together. Only when I'm physically with someone do they take on any sort of reality. I find myself seeking more and more sensation, more emotion trying to absorb every detail, no matter how miniscule, in the hope that some will stick, that the people who matter most to me will live on in my memory when they leave the room. Some part
of me is always aware though that as soon as they leave, my mind cannot keep their image sharp their thoughts and words clear.
Scents seem to linger longest in my memories; I can always summon at least the outlines of a place or time by remembering how it smelled.
Perfumes are a bonus and a curse reminding me of women I have known and sometimes of those I have loved. I cried
for twenty minutes on a bus, because a woman on the bottom deck was wearing Her perfume, the strong deeply musky scent just knocked down all the walls, all my defences and took me back to that year.3


As I write I am surrounded by the night smells of London thankfully I have so many ghosts for this that I can sort and choose only those that make me smile... Breaking
into Regents Park to talk to the Wolves... A heap of us rolling down to Kings Cross to get late night burgers and dodgy chips. Bullshit, play fights and laughter.
Now to the real reason for all this soul searching bollix tonight. I'm nurturing Anger. A friend has pissed me off in a big way and I can't have a real go until other
things get sorted out, by other people. I'm tempted to drop the whole thing but this one's a matter of trust, and well… I'm really pissed off! Quite apart from that, the situation seems to have brought on a bought of soul searching which, quite frankly, I could do without.
Time is now 3.20 a.m. and here I am still awake, still writing. There really is no
point in trying to sleep now, I have to be up in three hours and at work for 7 so I might as well sign this off and go watch a movie.
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