njedger.com

It was a warm evening and the skies were thick and the air was hazy. There was a promise from the weather forecasters of storms overnight. There was a sense of it, too, in the air - an almost palpable sensation. An electric current waiting to burst into life and thunder down onto the hot August earth. I had taken the train across from the city to stretch my legs and to look for ideas for stories. Being in amongst a crowd of people seemed a good way, back then, at being able to motivate my writerly mind into action. To sketch a few ideas within my mind, then to flesh them out back at home. I knew that I had to write, and that the words would come - but this did not solve the matter that it was necessary for me to then expose those words to a wider public in exchange for capital.

Down the promenade people were walking and cycling, sitting and resting, enjoying ice cream. The docks were across the river. Big red steel structures as if lifted from abstract art. Further upriver was the city, the outlines of its buildings heaving towards the dim yellow haze. I didn’t know, back then, that she lived in one of those brick waterfront apartment blocks. The river was quiet and dirty looking. The tide was out and beneath the promenade a few opportunistic families were making the most of the soft brown sand that had emerged. Away from the city, to the sea, the coastline stretched into obscurity. Old men walked on their own, humming to themselves. I looked at them and considered myself. I didn’t want to grow old and lonely. I wanted friendships and lovers. Old women walked together, talking to each other. A woman and her three children sat on a bench eating ice cream from a nearby van; two young girls in blue summer dresses: twins; their older brother with short black hair; their mother: tired-looking and glad to be sat on the bench. Seagulls swept down and up. A speed boat cut through the water and traced white lines across the water, its engine noise muffled in the distance. In the park, unseen teenagers were up to no good: shouting profanities, screaming and laughing. The promenade was full of life but there was a sense of depression or desperation in the air, lingering like a guttering candle.

The promenade was tired and rusting. The Odeon cinema was peeling and cracked and seemed to echo the story of another time that was more prosperous. But further on, the set back tall houses that sat looking out over the promenade and river front had an air of genteel respectability. Round the corner: terraced houses with tipped over bins, discarded bits of newspaper paper pages lonely and scruffy by the kerb and dirty puddles with flicked cigarette buts and cracked glass from bottles strewn and forgotten. The city across the river seemed close and far off - the wealth of rising structures seemed in contrast to the forgotten seaside front.

I sat on one of the benches and surveyed the scene around me. I knew that I had it in me to become a writer - and it felt like, at that time, all I needed to do was make a commitment to doing so. To writing. These thoughts mingled with my thoughts of this seaside town. This is what happens to seaside resorts, I thought to myself as more gulls dived and flew around. I had the sudden notion that I was dying in slow motion. We’re all heading towards our demise, I realised, but most of us never think that way. It felt like I was walking through a historical monument to Victorian holidays. Before the old promenade, further from the city, a modern mall-style building full of shops, a beacon of end-of-millenia futurism, when capital was sloshing round. The old Odeon building had an architectural charm, and even in its rundown state, there was a quality to it that belied its age. This place - the mall - just looks like a fabricated piece of shit, I thought. I looked across the water at the city and wondered if I would ever make it as a writer. I wanted so badly to make something of myself: to become independent and self-sufficient. I was tired of being reliant on others. I was tired of the embarrassment I felt. By this time I had had a single short story published called ‘Fallen Leaves in Spring’ and many more rejection letters. My desire to write was a burning one, but one that felt at times like a task for the dead. I looked back at the odious building. And the things inside? Just another emporium for food that tastes of nothing, films that don’t mean anything - a place that promises everything and delivers the bare minimum. Enough to sate an appetite, maybe.

What a bleak time to be alive.

And yet -

It’s also the best time to be alive - freedoms, safety, health and wealth. And despite all that - this is the best that we can come up with: giant structures built to entertain and feed the public. Food that’s anonymous and entertainment that dulls the senses. Escalators abound - a conveyor belt to the abattoir.

I considered the sky and the buildings and the people around me. If only there was a way to find a way of writing words in such an order that they became worthwhile, able to exchange them for enough money to support and sustain myself in a proper manner.