Its not the February Friday afternoon splendour up here that I had imagined when I downed tools and decided to head up to the beacon with the dog. Some of these late winter, very early spring late afternoons offer a low golden sun that lends an ethereal tone to the green-ness of the downland grass. This one, not so much. Half-way up I realised that my idea to travel light with just camera, phone, gilet and dog was not a great one. For a start, I didn't have the parking fare, and I was under-dressed for the biting winds...will I ever grow up and put my coat on?
But I had my phone, and so managed, with a boring amount of faff, to pay, and I had my hat, so we could proceed.
There was a nice hazy sun over the sea that I couldn't see, and some light blue sky peeping through. Northwards, the sky and landscape were a uniform leaden grey. Haywards Heath Friday afternoon. In the not so distant past I would have been whipping up lattes and milkshakes in the high street cafe. Even more distant past, I would have been working in the hospital just up the road. Even further back, we would have been tearing around on the motorbike, or by the fire of the pub with a red wine, rolling a cigarette to smoke in the chilly garden.
That fireplace in the pub went a few years ago now. And the company we kept, two or three of those chaps are now six feet under. The wine, a Tempranillo, so warming and fulsome, also a thing of my past. How quickly does the present become the past, and then the long past, where subtle and not so subtle changes render places no longer what they were. Now they live on in my head alone.
And over at the grey slab, empty rooms. Usually I would text from up here, and WhatsApp a picture, and he might send me one back, of the view from where he was. The first year of grief is all about firsts, I guess. The building stares back through my lens with sightless eyes impervious to the biting wind and the little person looking at it as if from many years ago.
