When I was still a person who looked like me, while I was still human and before that life ended, there were these things that reminded me of that person I was. Things that brought me back, so strongly, to home. Things like warm showers on cold indigo mornings, or the sensation of cold coastal rain on my warm face. Or the cry of seagulls, mist or the touch and scent of salty black rock. Images of empty beaches on a hot day - abandoned lobster pots, cracked and rusted with age, entwined with coarse black netting and barnacles. Small freezers stuffed with food; magic or walking home at dawn and feeling myself being washed in its red and gold light. Night time memories swirl into thick happy clouds like a footprint in the shore at the scent of tobacco and beer soaked into wool, or the cloy of a certain aftershave, like the cosy hug of warm beer in plastic glasses or the feel of long coats and thick scarves. The empty smell of photocopiers that somehow echoes down emptier corridors with your footsteps, treading machine-polished lino to bars lit only by candlelight that smell of toasted fish and of roasted vegetables. The sight of a Nazi-grey Morris Minor, or the muggy scents and sounds whilst carrying cardboard boxes through heavy rain. Hole-in-the-wall sceney clubs and their tang of cheap alcohol, cheaper aftershave and fresh peroxide. Instant coffee, like mud, and cigarettes to the sound of TV drag queens, Star Trek till dawn and the mirror image of something Restless. This was, of course, all so long ago.

Because today I’m dying, again. So slowly I am dying, a little bit more every day. I want to go home before I die. I want to go backwards before it stops. I want to go backwards because it won’t stop. I want to go backwards because it all stopped.