By A Darkling Lake

The walk from the car park to our new office is through the landscaping at the posh end of our site. I got here at 06:30 this morning and now it is dark at that time and all the lights are off. The path has a bridge which goes over the pond (Sadly now empy of fish but still a big draw for ducks on they way to or from Martin Mere). I hadn't really noticed it on the few previous days but I suddenly noticed the gentle ripples in the almost total darkness and go a really strong sense of Deja Vu. I still haven't tied down where I'd seen the image before. I thought it might have been Shetland but we went in the Summer and it never really gets dark at all - they have the Simmer Dim when you can read by natural light at Midnight so it would not have been dark at all. Sometimes, I get really strong images in my mind like this. I have a recurring one of a strange landscape which for reasons of association in my head which are far too complex to voice, I call 'Saturday afternoon images'. There is a picture which accompanied a long forgotten short story in Omni Magazine which had a surreal picture of clowns against a winter sunset sky in a blasted wood which always lifted me probably because it reminded me of the winters where I lived. We lived in a 300-year old house called Yew Tree Cottage in the Shadow of the Herefordshire Beacon and all the time I lived there I never really appreciated how wonderful this was for anything other than a few minutes at a time. The whole area around the Beacon is still so trannquil even after the aberration of the Castlemorton Rave. I don't think many of the attendees there appreciated their location either. I was a bit fed up with the people I went to school with being described as 'elderly and middle class' in the NME. I don't think I can be described as elderly yet. I do remember seeing one guy I went to school with gently threatening action if anyone breached his boundary fences. A 'Get of my laaaand' moment for real. Anyway, I should not complain. I left twenty years ago and would probably still not appreciate my location if I hadn't.

All of this has led me a long way from the original spark which was the wonderful image of the gently rippling water on our pond. A nice visualisation for when the demons start coming down. Sometimes I wish it would stay dark all day just like I wish it would rain all day. It is quite nice to walk into the office in the dark and the gradual lightening of the sky makes me feel less happy. Is that weird. Maybe its something like Claustrophilia. The dark defines your own little world while the daylight shows up all the other rubbish in the world which you have to deal with. Oh Well. It is light now so time to start work.