The Quiet Whitchurch.

I'd left the house within very late dark, and by the few and fading stars found myself standing upon a platform. The sound of the train stations are all rather similar, and yet they are more soothing back in Essex. Although.
I took the train into morning, the transitions of colour sitting comfortably with the transition between joined countries. The colour was magic, I paced through words before me, as the blacks turned to blues and the blues into purples. The rough horizon of greyed clouds at the sky's base seemed not to move at all with the sky and I.
I reached my second train by my own accords, due to asking for help near (I admit, not at, for there was no one there) the Help Desk.
'I don't suppose you could tell me the platform for Whitchurch Rail, Cardiff?' I asked with a polite and yet rushed accent.
'No, I'm not from round here you see', replied the man, in the finest example of a Welsh accent speaking broken English that you ever did hear. And he sounded so sincere. As I bustled off, one woman against a wall of people walking at me down a narrow and windowless corridor, I contemplated where else in the world a plump little white man with a strong Welsh accent might be from.
The second train was much like a two-part bus. With strange seats, on either side of the aisle they faced the opposite ways to eachother. I made no sense to myself as I watched Cardiff slip by beneath me, through the water and mud marked windows. I wondered where I was going, until this week I had never known a Whitchurch to exsist in any other place but Bristol. I assumed it be much the same (with an Asda, old people and chavs), but with a rail station, where I then planned to jump into a waiting cab for the final leg of my important coming destination.
It wasn't far, it seemed, as I nearly missed my stop for reading Pratchett, and always attempting to read the Welsh sign before the English, just to see if it was similar, at every stop. (Lift - Lifft - seriously? Clearly, in your creative attempt to officially make yourself a 'different' country, Wales, you fell short and lacking at public transportation).

What I recieved at the station, however, was complete lack of humankind. I deboarded the train onto what I can only describe as a glorified bus stop, with but one, simple exit down a country-like path. There was not another soul around me, and an unusual quiet. I decided to take the path hastily, lest a 'Creature of the Tracks' (who had obviously eaten but all of the locals) were to view me from beneath the nearby bridge and place a marker upon my head that read ' Foreign Delicacy '.
That said, still do not think it is a seperate country, Wales. It may feel like one, with all the overhead speaking in the main train station, but it ain't.
I then came to find myself on a housing estate. Quite a nice one, I'll give it that, but nothing was moving. There was no sound, no cars in motion, no twitching curtains, heck - it took a while to even see a bird.
The Town without Sound, is what we shall fondly refer to this place as. (TWS).
I looked left to see a bend in the road and veered off out of sight. I looked right to see an endless street of the same, silent, white houses. My shoddy map, printed from Google Maps, with a hand drawn red line to show route to a helpful and waiting Cab driver became utterly useless, in that it showed scarce streets signs, and the ones it did seemed to have been translated.
There were no street signs for a good half a mile in TWS. And when I happened upon one, it had the strangest set of letters, that to my eye read something like Emqaurlarisauras Teq. Or Te Ty To Thumb. Either way, it weren't on the map.
A woman left her house with a child, wordless and slightly staring, they got into a car and went right. So, I went right. Call it instinct. Further up, a man left his house with his two children, and waved off his wife at the front door. None of these people spoke, it was all a silent transaction from one destination to the next, even their farewells were overexaggerated waving and general pecks to the hand with a blow. Not a 'Good bye' here or any where.
I followed the school run until I found TWS's library, cars passed me silently and my only hope was in the few lingering magpies, that hummed and cawed lowly above me. Like breadcrumbs, i mentally noted the strange shapes of the tree trunks I was passing, so as to find my way back. (This would later be proved to work.)

For a good while of this journey I feared I may never see home again, that fate had brought me to wander aimlessly and quietly in the streets of Cardiff. Not even Cardiff, outer Wales. Doomed for eternity, constantly trudging along in a wonderful coat unappreciated by the masses of emptyness surrounding me. Par the odd old person.

A spar! Hooray, of all the other shops on this tiny street I stumbled upon, I found one I recognised. Safety! Surely! Oh little TWS, you have yet to slay my hopes!
'Hello there', I said to the young boy behind the counter inside, mine having been the first voice I'd heard since the last train station. 'Do you know where I can get a cab?'
He looked bewildered, and for a moment I felt a stab of guilt that I'd terrified the poor lad in an overly stated cockney gesture.
'Cab... Taxi?' I corrected myself, speaking slowly like a red man in a spanish sweet shop, wearing a Union Jack vest.
'Ah yes, yes!' He seemed delighted he could help, and scibbled down a number.
I began to type this into my phone, then remembered I hadn't a clue where we were, and so I asked the boy again.
'Rhibwina' he replied, and wished me good luck. Not enough luck wishing, it seemed, that I might not attempt to order a cab to 'Ribena Village' to a Welsh Man on the phone, when he had simply asked for my name. Sure enough when I recieved the text to claim my 'Dragon Taxi' had arrived (have been playing far too much Skyrim for this comment) it was no where to be seen.
And so I hailed one.

I spent the next five hours in a pub older than any one I know, attempting interest and attention and gazing at the ever-changing erratical weather at the window (hail, rain, hail, snow, sunshine, snow etc), praying that should the apocolypse come, it won't happen to me whilst I am in Wales. The test went well, as did the small talk and attempt at caring for said small talk, and my usual trait of remembering not a single name failed slightly, for I remember 'Rog'.

I should think to end it here, at when I made it back to the Whitchurch station through TWS (having followed the peculiar trees, and having had trouble finding the pathway that led to the station, for it seemed to move along a house each time I neared it's mouth). Yes here, quite sure that there was no humanity in this part of TWS, so little that the bus shelter at the 'Train station' had not an ounce of graffitti upon it, and it's bin was entirely empty, par the collected rain water/snow.
There was one track in this station, and two simple arrows depicting that Cardiff was one way, and Coryton the other. They shared the track, and in the hope that one would come from the Coryton direction, one of course approached from Cardiff. But the nice man spied me standing feebly with Pratchett in hand under an umbrella and said I may board the train, for it goes to Coryton and slides back the same way. There is only one train in TWS.

There was more. If it is or if it ain't. Quite.

And so returns the night..

A slight and convincing novice, lie I at night,
With words so weak and a mind so active,
I give away little by sight.
And further my days, retreating inwardly,
Downward it feels, when it is only inside.
Little leaves this mouth that is truly felt,
And unhappiness is masked in irritance and terrible verse.
There should be marvellous rhyme,
There ought be fine and passionate spelling,
And yet leaks from I,
A simple salt solution of which my body is bitter and wrung.
And should we visit passion again,
Should I have a true calling,
Come ever, it’s voice, revealing it’s love for me,
Living in my breath and singing in my voice.
But no such passion has infected me,
No talent embedded in this flesh.
I am the novice that dulls the moment,
I am the weak voice at the end of a dark hall.
I am the expendable, the necessary character to move on to the next scene,
I have become little more a legend than a baby continuing to swim.
Such hope did old voices have in me,
Once I was so missed.
And now I flick at the cobwebs here, in my own dismal abyss.
As I say, however, it is not to be found around I,
But deep inside; it aches to be cleaned,
Are my fears engraved in here?
Do vile shades linger in wait?
I am placeless, and I am label-less,
I look like nothing in particular, and have about as much to contribute.
A pallor like any other,
And eyes that are eyes as they are.
Give in to sleep tonight, the unloved,
Lying by the one.
And attempt calm tonight, unloved,
Become the pain and diminish it.
I grow heavy in body, and mentally I strive to the melancholy still,
Where nothing moves on nor becomes tired nor changes,
I may be always this way.
But should it ruin it all, should it just,
That your irritated nature should dwell beside me,
And finally the wall has begun,
How hard I try still to warn.
You hear me so little through sleeping eyelids,
My nightly begging becomes prayer in slumber.
How beautiful you appear by the light of sleep,
And in this, this silence destroys me.

Just a note.

Eloquent, and it has it's way of making me feel powerful,
But only when I am in control of my physical self,
And with a voice long gone ringing still,
I find I am melancholic on a Monday afternoon.
Just again, would it be, a recieved request and a dull reaction?
Does he know I'll act his final wish?
And where is my guide throughout all of this?
Oh, and as she sings around midnight,
It becomes the thought that dwells and occupies,
It becomes the inkling that wakes me, and keeps me that way.
Let's hope he sleeps.
Can he so, with such a pain in such a place,
And does he rest when others pace?
It's the view through the back of a glass bottle,
Its the sun aching through in a mild January,
And all the emotions lingering from the past,
Yet creating little today, but motivation.
The buses here, sound as they do in London town.
And where do I really miss any more?
I have become the wanderer, true and so, not waiting or aiming,
Just lingering as the scattered leaves, left here from last year.

Just another thought or four, before I take one of our beloved drives,
And how the summer sings so sweet, just once, a once in a memory,
For I've something to strive for now,
A mind that wonders for me,
And an eye that daily looks for me.
Suddenly it is quite the occasion, just about all of them,
And I do not sit in regret, or in wait of a call from home.
I am building a home upon my own back,
For it seems it is where ever I want it to be, these days.
I can sleep any where.
And so I tread another path,
With hope in my stride.
All the deeds will be done, and so they can rest,
Only after, finally, I realise I've something to come back to.
Not merely a puppet, but an achievement.

I fight the letters.

Miss S. Saphirest.

Her letters.

To whomever it may concern,
Supposedly it just happens again, and now it is as dull and as much an annoyance as a slight and reoccurring toothache or rash. But when does an emotion become something like a rising eczema? Of all the years I have moved on and moved on and on and so forth have I now come to a suitable stop at which I am pleased to stay, and this emotion may inbed itself at my side. Niggling and prying. It is a difficult concept to put forward in word, but apparently, and happily, i do that well enough.
And I am aware of it's presence, beside/around/upon me, and it's trying not to get my point through, such as a child might constantly wail at it's mother as she attempts communicate the days events and rows to her much missed friend, whom she rarely sees due to said child and how it keeps her occupied. And it does.
I am always occupied with it. Like the voice in the back of the head of a murderer, or a worrier who misplaced a key he didn't much need.
Of course, I am not saying I am ill. Be I far from such a thing and thankfully glad so.
But I am distracted, it would seem. I do perform and then suddenly judge myself for whatever action I have taken, somehow lashing out at my own doing with the sly range of a snake, attempting to drag back in what cannot be undone. And yet my face sits still in this moment. And ponders.
My conclusion of the slight wrong that is with myself, is that I am indeed, or at least this emotion as it were, is my own worst enemy. And through the days that I try and blast it away and be 'careless' as the rest, it simply lingers and waits upon any moment of a bring-down. And what an event that turns to be.
For I have found that it waits in my stomach, it sleeps there and it is motionless. It does nothing but waits upon the wake up, and when those words are born, any of which may drag down to my pits, it stirs slowly and widely. Stretches out so that my stomach lurches and becomes suddenly aware that it is heavy, and my heart seems to be singing a rhythm against it if at all possible; It scratches with it stretch at the gentle lining of my scarred stomach, causing a rush of cold and stale adrenalin to pass through my skin, and redden my pale face.
It wants me to feel this way.

Fighting it alone is dull, and so I share, I write this letter in the hope that it may reach forgiving eyes who see beyond natural reality and believe in such a beast that might crawl about my veins. I have become nothing but an underseeing wreck in my spare time, and the pale face that sees the world is aging because of it.
I must banish it, perhaps simply control it. Use it for my own use? Anything, is what I plead. The only thing I find standing in my way, is myself. And i detest it greatly.

I end by reminding myself that I indeed have achievements, and that though they are not perhaps what may impress nor bother others, they are mine, and in my life they are what I have. They propel me forward into others, I hope, should this beast not label the rest of my doings 'Unworthy'.

Signed (In ink signature);

'Of course, you know, it's actually.... me?'

Rather it is a delicate misbalance of raw emotions and the need to do better.
Dear me, what a sight. It's all in the rhythm, is it not?
Perhaps not when the sax leaks low.
I'm sure you will have already assumed to stop reading, as this is in no way poetry nor a story. It's just rambling, rambling I and you, following, somewhat meakly and annoyed. 'Is this the only route?' You'd ask, and I'd reply in verse and sing something Dury.
What I'm trying to say is, this is where I've been.
Neither at the desk nor here, at the desk.
Just, well, behind me here, reading or playing, I'm not sure which occurs the least.
I've become a shell, in which I reside, technically still myself in there, but... in there.
There are rude encounters, there are misramblings and there are words I never say but always ponder, lulling about in a universe so small, with very little to do, this little mind of mine. It doesn't do much, I mean, my body buys itself the time, and assumes it has achieved something or another or alot and then my mind sighs lethargicly and gives off a little.... increative steam.
Such a recluse, I appear to my mind's seven or so eyes to have achieved nothing, and yet my leg replies in pain and certificates arrive at the door with a familiar and overused name stamped on them (That no one has!).
And yet the parcel I wanted still has yet to arrive.
Derived but never without!
I'm so bloody happy you see, such a sweet occasion is an afternoon just like the one before, and with a canvas still in the shop and paint at my ankles, I watch the swirl of purple leak from my body and into the shower's domain. Blue, was it not? And yet I breathe this ghastly gothic !
'Ah yes, ask at the desk and become a minor....ity?'
'Oh it is you ! (I), and such changes you've made, you're the strange one we always assumed you would be, in a strange job, an odd partnership and a peculiar view! Why, how shocking?!'
Realities - 'You (I) have recieved one email'
Me - "Golly!"
Email - "Hope you're alright".

Don't ask me, for I am as mentioned, the crumb in your lemonade. I'm not alot else, I should doubt in the next week I will be, but don't forget to report back next year, I shan't be in this abode and I'm assuming by the power of Good, and Good he is, that I shall be painting a wall somewhere near a plant pot with a balloon of orange within it. Not a wicker basket. Darn, not even only having seen the advert for the wicker man and not the film can help my spelling now!

Stop by pretending and get out of your car at 4.31 in the sweet morning and tell us a story far off. Long off.

I'm already gone.
'That's not all I want to say'.