A tall man and an unexpected posting...

Yes I know what I said, but electricity problems in Wales have meant that I remain stranded in the real world at least for now. Although to be honest at this time of year, ‘the between times’ as I think of them, it’s hardly reality. Anyway as I am going nowhere, literally, geographically and metaphorically, I thought I may as well get this one off my chest before I vanish into the mist of the Celtic Kingdom once more.

I’m disgruntled and despondent. Well, as I keep saying it is that time of year; and the tall man flickers at the edge of my vision as he always does around this time. The tall man. He’s been with me for years, not harming just watching. But sometimes I wonder what it is he wants. I picked him up in a Birmingham semi many years ago; such an odd place to meet such a one as he. Christmas to New Year he flickers around and then he’s gone like an uninvited guest at an unwanted Christmas party. God grant that he flickers off very soon.

The tall man; I don’t talk about him much. He belongs with the girl and the sometimes cat, and all the others that are never quite around me, but almost inside the edge of vision (Is that you John?). I don’t believe in ghosts; dead people wandering around haunting the living (IS that you John?). So I don’t know what these things can be. The product of an overactive imagination, shadows, echoes of the past, a touch of mental illness, portents, an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese? Or maybe they are all just fragments of underdone Dickensian potato.

Tall man aside, this is never my best time. The frenetic lead up to Christmas, followed by the activity itself and then the deep slump into nothing, breaks my pattern - and my flow doesn’t run forwards or backwards or even side to side but remains like a puddle waiting for some ripple to break it. I’m usually an early riser, but I lie in bed until nine. I usually have some sort of purpose, but I shuffle from one thing to another without achievement. I’m usually balanced (well as balanced as someone like me can be) but I ebb and flow like a tide pulled by too many moons from each and every direction at once.

I wish that someone would throw a stone.

I could go on, but I won’t. My nightmares at this time are too flimsy and damning to recount and he's never quite the same twice. He usually wears dark colours - from black to grey to deepest blue - and a hat. Once with a feather in the brim. He spoke on one occasion (or was it twice), a voice that sounded like tolling bells and his words came true. His hand is constant though. That beckoning hand, the one I shall never follow or touch... I hope.

These unsettled 'in between time' feelings. Is it the tall man? Is it the memory of too many other Christmases? Is it something in my blood – alcohol maybe? Or could it just be that this time of year, these ‘between times’, don’t really suit my humour? I won’t put it down to the weather. That would be too easy. So who knows then, the tall man maybe? He probably does and maybe he holds the answer to everything.

I expect that the light will soon be restored, the electricity mended, the power given back. Power outages never last for ever.

Mine may take a little longer though.