Home for Christmas

Autumn darkens to winter. I don't get any better. Sadness drags out into one constant note. I lose University in days where the sun never comes up.

Leaving the pharmacy, I push the first tablets from the blister pack, blinking. Home for Christmas, the second without my mother.

I don't sleep; nearly miss the coach. A flotilla of yachts on trailers like sleeping sea birds, sails folded, obstruct the taxi, white prows nosing into busy streets. It's the funniest thing I have ever seen.

So run down, so slow; now I can't stop talking, outside myself, jittering, amazed by everything. Connections jump inside me like fire. People stare. Motorway signs flash.

Outside of London, everything is blasted and dark, fields bleached, black trees and frosty hedgerows, orange lamps and deep shadow.

I feel ecstatic. I laugh at my dead mother, at depression.

Arriving in Newcastle, everything is grey bricks and light snow, swollen purple sky. A Christmas scene. In the light of tall shop windows, mothers wrapped in scarves swing shopping bags, children smiling.

Dickensian I say, over and over.

Perfectly arrayed, a snow globe, it is trickery, dimension, depth and detail simulated.

Christmas Eve, disgusted, I stop the tablets.