Life on earth

The grey clouds lifted by 10.15 and a kind of clarity was restored for a brief while. By eleven the sky had grown dark again, the angles of light on the ground narrowing, the cold rain biting on your face...

You observe everything from a distance: a policeman speaking but saying nothing; a woman in her early thirties, hair pulled tightly back, large bangles, lost in a reverie; a postman in his bright orange top delivering letters and packages faithfully; three drunks sitting on the steps of 'the temple' (a restaurant); and the joggers, running to clear the system, a different image of themselves in their head. This small patch of land becomes bright, illuminated and full of memories by mid-afternoon.

You like to watch the old second-division matches, slower, more passionate, less moneyed and therefore more real than the commercially run premier league. They remind you of The Big Match on Sundays, just after roast lamb and mint sauce. You drift in and out of sleep...how much of your life has been spent in dreams! You walk on the Bridge, hands in pockets, and wonder to yourself if you'll suddenly wake up somewhere else and just scratch your head, trying to remember this feeling.

January in the north is always so clear. You remember how small life is.

Life on earth carries on without us. You look out of the window and think of all the time-the end of winter, Spring, early summer- all that will pass before I'm back. You walk past an old woman in a head scarf at the charity shop, her back bent double, almost horizontal, so that she's barely able to raise her face to see anyone. How many seasons old people have seen..how much they know of distances!

As you grow older books become less important as you try to figure out what's really important and what can be let go off. There is less to say as well.

Is there a sentence, a word, that will get you out, get you back, make sense of it all? G minor is, said G. Steiner, fundamental to western sensibilities. He might as well have said this fragile, waning northern light, the early-evening dark silhouettes and deep shadows carries with it the same sense of loss.