Grey With A Cloud Of Old-English Melancholy
It's often the small, overlooked and insignificant things that make the biggest impression on me, I find.
When I visit new places.
I am drawn to the quiet. To the rundown. To the old and historic, yes, but places away from where the tourists disembark their coaches. Places that are a little rough, perhaps, and those that have, almost certainly, experienced brighter times and better days.
Because they have a story to tell that is worth listening to, I think.
And sometimes that overriding sense of grandeur-passed and the ticking of time, well, it envelopes places with a feeling and a sense of something intangible and attracts those with a desire to hear.
Like an archetypal, out of season seaside resort, faded and grey with a cloud of old-English melancholy hanging low over it's sparsely populated heart, where hardy souls brave the elements and take the air alongside shuttered amusement arcades, empty car parks and large puddles from last nights showers.
And the places I love, well, they somehow seem more real under a melancholic cloud of memories.
The station that used to bring tourists by their thousands, closed and now moved on. The doors that welcomed goods and people, the beating heart of a thriving community, no more than a few faded words on wood. The sign, direction for those in proudly bought, English built, touring cars, piled high with children, bathing suits, buckets and spades, barely noticed at the side of a road. And the house, pre-loved by a famous, long forgotten owner, now patiently awaiting the stags and hens and watching the beach with empty, boarded eyes.
All with a pervading sense of what was before, rather than what is now.
Mostly ignored by visitors and locals, unnoticed and sadly rarely seen. But still defiantly shouting out, raising their collective lived-in voices above winter gales and the pounding rain, and over loudly reverberating murmurs of indifference.
“We are here, if you want to listen.”
