On a typical November evening, on a typical weekday night, the wind is mocking me. Maybe not in a mean way, but in a teasing way that could quickly become nasty – schoolchildren-during-breaktime nasty. It’s almost a warning, a reminder of the promise I made – years back now – that the wind, even though my memory is blurry, remembers.
The film I’d been to see had been interesting, deliberately intellectual in an obtuse, inaccessible way that leaves me with a budding migraine along my left temple and whilst I feel I understood it, there’s also the vague pressing idea that I’ve somehow missed the whole point of the film.
It’s only 7pm and pitch black. It’s been dark since 4 pm though. Walking home at this time of year always makes me miss the long summer nights, the sticky feeling of time stretching out, giving more daylight than we should be allowed. Yet, in autumn and winter, time – well, day – is stolen from us. Payback for our long summer days. The darkness of the streets feels just a bit darker today though.
They, the council people, haven’t bothered to replace the yellow-orange lights of the road I’m on to the tall, brilliant white glaring-down lights of other roads yet. I don’t think they ever will, since they’ve embezzled all the funds and people rarely walk down this way.
These streets are always still, people generally avoid them – opt for the parallel roads – roads that lead to Church Street much quicker, and the tram route there attracts most of the pedestrians generally. But it’s not quite deserted. An occasional car passes by, someone hops over a parking lot wall walks across the road without looking either way and disappears into unlit bushes. It’s better not to question what people like that are up to.
But it is silent despite the occasional passers-by. As silent as a city can be. Which isn’t all that silent, there’s always an alarm going off somewhere in the distance, the clocktower makes itself known every hour and there’s the ever present hum of traffic. It is silent for a city. The big generators near some metal ‘influential figures’ statues are turned off, the shady company owning the building must have finally gone bankrupt. One of the street-lamps is making a vaguely worrying buzzing sound, light flickering. But other than that, the streets stays quiet.
It’s cold, too, cold and dark. 7 degrees the last time a weather app was consulted. Still, too. Other than to mock me, there is no wind around. The wind that follows me isn’t the same kind of wind that rustles tree leaves after all.
As I walk, I try to not fully notice it, to notice the wind would give them a way in. Scorned, and always petty, little leafy tornadoes start to form on the pavement and glimmering black tarmac of the road. The only noise is that of leaves scraping the ground. Not just leaves of course, these aren’t countryside wind eddies. Clear plastic bottles, cellophane wrapping, and copyright infringing chicken shop boxes also clatter around and scrape at the floor, adding to the percussive rhythm of the November street.
The wind is beckoning. Trying to get my attention. As I walk and the eddies follow me, it becomes more difficult to not notice them. They’re entrancing, in their perfect circles in the otherwise still evening air, unseen and unfelt currents pushing them round and round and round again. Their purpose is to beckon, to pull, to make one distracted enough to come to them.
I’d jumped into the middle of a leaf eddy once, as a child, in the countryside. Part of me had never quite left it would seem. Since then, the wind follows and the eddies aren’t too far away either. I think it had been the leaves that had taken part of my childhood. But here, even the Freddo or Cadbury’s wrappers could steal something, maybe the clattering smarties box too.
Even now, though I know better, the urge to stand in the middle, to let it take me, grows daily – as the memory of before fades and present day becomes more difficult.
It would be the least difficult thing to do.
Yet, I still remember a bit too much of those days, and so – although it’s hard – I manage to turn the corner and continue on my way home.
The wind knows that eventually I’ll return to it. And it’s patient in a way no other being could be.
It’ll get me someday.
Justine Russell 