That was the day

Biting wet mornings transform my bed into a womb.

My throat and head area feeling a little bruised, I decide not to leave my temple of soft until it’s absolutely necessary. And as my cinema shift begins at 8pm, that’s quite late. I read Don DeLillo’s White Noise, with enjoyable horror.

The remainder of the day spent mooching and recording musical leftovers in between. Basslines that needed doing. Quick takes of shit songs that I wouldn’t normally bother to record.

Cinema.

I enjoy idly strolling up and down the brown aisles, seats up, sweeping my holey shoe across the smooth soft thick carpet, checking for stuff. Staring at the painted arches and art deco red lighting. Gazing to the back, at the projector in the window, purposefully positioned, aching with potential light and sound and mass entertainment.

Feel the charged atmosphere of the room; the heavy, silently-closing doors, the slightly dusty air, the men’s toilet, the occasional sweet wrapper on the floor.

(Some curly haired git wandering about gaping open-mouthed at walls.)

I walk around in the semi-light of the room and it is all mine. It is empty. I hold the keys. I wait for smiling, polite folk to come give me bits of card to tear, to give my dark-room stalking a legitimate excuse. Yeah, this is my job.

I sit through quickly-edited, teasing/confusing trailers for films that could be about anything. And one for James Bond.

I would have to do something if the film was a bit blurry or the sound was out of sync.

I go down, fiddle with bits of admin, answering questions on bits of stray paper. “What was the audience like? Was the film well received? What is your opinion of the film?”

Questions answered with dryness and humour. Marie Antoinette does not improve on multiple viewings. It was confused trash the first time around.

I later say fond farewells to the sighing drabbles of the specific public that this independent cinema attracts. I eavesdrop conversations, offering opinions if it seems appropriate.

“Well, if you ask me, I think it’s a pile of shite.”

Enjoyable conversations with colleagues. This cinema attracts opinionated and intelligent film-goers it seems.

Then it’s time to venture out into the blusteriest of evenings, passing groups of first year students struggling to get to the next venue at the start of their three year drinking tour of Newcastle.

They walk sideways, stumble, giggle, laugh almost self-consciously as they hold onto each other by the shoulders, aware that they can only behave like this in groups. They are doing their best to re-enact some classic student clichés. They’ve learned these behaviours. Being drunk in public and laughing and stealing things from pubs and roads.

That’s what university is for.

Thankfully it’s fine to be drunk in public if you’re young and relatively beautiful.

No doubt beer trophies will be collected. People will throw up. Probably someone will get laid. Best they stick together though. Newcastle is a real city with real life mean fuckers who will gladly lamp a pissed up ponce, noncing about by Monument.

Well, I try my best now to sound mature and superior (read faking and jealous). I’ve been there. University is a time for life imitating poster sale.

Today I really missed India. The missions, the adventures. Freedom. The sense of always flying, and always landing softly. Like a cat in the air.

And now I ‘chat’ online to my distant girlfriend, a million miles away. I watch with detached dismay as words appear, pink letters, bouncing punctuation. It’s all I have. I can look at a photo, I suppose. I try to find enthusiasm for this textual conversation, relating some key events and thoughts of the day into bitesize half sentences. And yet there is a strange pressure, a rushing of words to attention, an inevitable interpretation of textual silence.

It’s just not natural, is it.