Mr Bleak...

Mr Bleak is everywhere, he knows no boundaries.

We’ve all been to bleak places - open, empty, vacant landscapes, tumbled down buildings, places past - forgotten and discarded. I was taken to one of those places last week – Ravenscar, the town that never was. First time I’d been there, first time I’d even heard the story. Ravenscar, the next and new Scarborough, all planned, even started, and then not - a dream that didn’t happen, a dream that failed.

As I walked from the top of the hill down to the alum mines on our way to find the beach with the promise of fossils we would never find (a dream that didn’t happen, a dream that failed) - as I walked, the wind flap-flapping in my ears, a threat of rain in the air - as I walked down the steep stony track winding its way to the steel gray sea - as I walked he came on me…Mr Bleak.

Perhaps it was the ruins, perhaps it was the weather, maybe it was the tale of the town that never was or the tingling of my bad back invading my legs, the failure of finding fossils, that flap-flap of wind in my ears. It might have been any, all, or none of these that caused Mr Bleak to appear walking beside me, staying by my side even as I struggled back up the hill - away from the bleak landscape, leaving the sea and rocks behind, Mr Bleak still with me.

Mr Bleak, dreamer of lost dreams - lost dreams – faded photographs of things long gone, faded paper plans on an abandoned station platform, cracked clay tiles – incomplete pictures of a future never formed. A woman in evening dress stood outside a house that never was, a lighthouse all in darkness warning no ships away from the rocks, a train on a journey to nowhere, never arriving - all facing towards nothing, all on that journey to nowhere with Mr Bleak.

Mr Bleak will find you no matter where you hide - even Ravenscar.