Psychogeography: Jayne's Lonesome Night Walk

Last night, I was at home, alone and at a loose end. It was late-ish, but I wasn't tired so I decided to go for a walk.

Two things nearly stopped me; it seemed Autumn had asserted itself leaving no hope now of going back to Summer. The nights felt to me to have drawn in quickly and walking in the dark seemed suddenly menacing. In addition, I would be forced at least in part to follow the route I take six days a week, to SHOP, which I thought would be all too familiar.

Once I started walking, these things didn't matter at all as I had forgotten that the route, the city and the establishments would be in reverse; the places that aren't open at 10am, are open at 10pm and those that are open in the day, at night have their lights dimmed and shutters pulled. There were no potted shrubs outside the gym and the strange motorway barrier that acts as security for the local shop was firmly in place. Yet the normally darkened bars and restaurants were full of light and life.

And people. Far from being intimidating, the streets were exciting and interesting. An open window allowed me to eavesdrop on music and voices, I passed a man wearing shorts and flip flops with nothing else, carrying a plastic bag, going - where? Two old ladies with arms interlocked and some staggering drunks. The lights on the boats on the river looked Christmassy - at one point the smell of the river mixed in with a smell of frying and vinegar from a takeaway, to bring to mind childhood holidays.

The vignettes I glimpsed are my favourite: a man in a pub shakes a finger in a exaggeratedly comic manner across the bar to another man, who is nonchalantly leaning on a beer pump. The people around them all laugh. Suited waiters, waiting with hands clasped in front of them for late hungry diners. A man smoking and swaying outside a house.

At the same time as I look, smell, walk, I think. I think of my sister, I haven't seen her for ages. Part of an old love song is playing languorously on loop in my head, 'when we first met, I surprised to get, that feeling'. I try and guess what my loved ones are all doing right now. I try and imagine what strangers in faraway places are doing right now. I think about something I heard on the radio that interested me, I briefly consider learning Japanese. I remember something hurtful, I see a car that reminds me of a old boyfriend. Things like that.

I turned back at at the roundabout and made my way home, following the same route on the opposite side of the road. Eventually, I turned from the main road into the gloom of a side road, a last car's beam lapped my back, surging up round my ears to sting my eyes, before receding and leaving me in the dark. At home, everything was as I left it; a book thrust aside, the cat, asleep and unmoved on the bed, and silence now. I got into bed and wrote this.