2004/5

At two a.m. on New Year's Eve I was worn out and in the floating sensations of fatigue, I felt one of those growing senses of disorientation as the world around you seems to grow ever more dreamlike and bizairre. I'd seen twenty hours and three countries since breakfast. In the sci-fi Dark side of the Sun, Terry Pratchett says that there is some soul-like part of the psyche which can't travel faster than light, and so it takes a moment to catch up when people travel in his space-ships. I humbly suggest that something similar happens on Eurostar.

If I was to choose a moment to pinpoint this breakdown of normality, it would be 2 a.m., when the cigarette smoke stung my eyes as I shouldered my way through the crowd of hipsters in a Belgian jazz club. I wanted nothing more than to go back to the apartement, but the walk through the midnight streets of Brussels had been long and involved a few stages on desolate trams and crossing cold squares where teenage boys threw fireworks at each other. With the fallen streamers and trampled cigarette ends, the aftermath of what must have been a streetparty looked like war debris. I would never find my way back without the help of the hosts.

Sitting at a table in the mirrored corner of the jazz club with similarly tired Germans, for no reason at all I thought of the anglo-saxon poem, The Wanderer. I don't remember how it goes.

I awake on the strand with sand for my pillow
the calls of seabirds are the voices of friends long dead.

This morning my phone has an unsent text-message in memory that just says "Elesium is a chillout". I guess you can interpret that any way you like.

Music: Damien Rice and Sinead O'Connor mixed up with Belgian jazz.