Part one of two 

I started writing this post in my head a while ago – it was darker at that time, full of omens, portents and presentiments of my own death.

I’d started to feel the brush of Death in almost every hour of every day, there was no rational reason for it, but I saw signs everywhere.

Ravens in trees, people that looked like ghosts from my past, random news feeds and twitter updates, you name it, I could see it there.

It didn’t help that I’d managed to hurt somebody that I love and then handled that hurt and the situation around it very badly.

I did.

It’s too late and I don’t think I can fix it. But that’s my loss and regret, I’ll have to live with it.

Add a crappy experience at work in the past few months, living alone in a strange place and a sense of quiet isolation and it all added up to a pretty bad mindset.

And so I took myself off Twitter for a week so that I could just sit and read books, watch TV, listen to music (and go to work for 12 hours a day, obviously).

Then, last Saturday, I took a long drive out for the day to visit a town that had been recommended to me, a place with a castle and a cathedral, quirky little shops and a number of bars and restaurants.

I did the obligatory tourist things and found myself fascinated by the castle, in excellent condition, with outstanding views, a massive wall to walk around and a number of excellent exhibits.

I was early enough that there weren’t too many fucking tourists around to spoil the photos  and it was by  morbid coincidence that reflected my mindset that I found that there’d been a number of public executions in the 1800s on the spot that I took the photo from..

Still, it was diverting enough and I was glad that I’d made the trip rather than hide in Preston.

After a number of hours, I went for lunch and sat in a bar that overlooked the castle, the cathedral and a small Airborne Memorial Garden attached to the castle. As I had no intention of driving for a while, I had a glass of wine with a very hot chilli for lunch, opened my kindle and read/ people watched.

The light was shining through my wine glass onto the table and making a pretty little display – when these words appeared on the page of the book I was reading. (The Lovers, John Connolly)

“He put the glass down and let the candlelight play upon the wine, spreading red fractals upon the tabletop like the ghosts of rubies”

I smiled to see the words and the image played out in real life, and I settled into the people- watching, becoming more relaxed as I did.

Then I noticed the group of people moving towards the memorial.

end