FLOOKBURGH LAST MONDAY

When I left the caravan, night was falling fast. The ribbon of road into the village was in total darkness. Only a sharp gash in the sky in the far west reminded me that there had ever been any daylight. Feeble sodium lamps lit the main street of Flooksburgh and reflected their light off the wet road onto my face. The fish shop had no customers. Three men sat in the lounge of the ‘Hope and Anchor’ nursing pints of beer. A woman hastily drew the blinds in the flat above the newsagent’s shop, doubtless suspecting me to be a peeping tom, which I am, of course, albeit in an instructional way, observing, learning and understanding, even in the pitch dark. The market cross stood moodily in front of a dilapidated cottage on Main Street. The legend at the base of the cross read, in faded script, that Edward I had granted this untidy jumble of a village a Royal Charter in 1279. I walked up to the station. Several youths were talking loudly. I tightened my grip on my umbrella. There was no-one in the station. The next train was due in forty minutes. Some of the platform lamps were out. The October night was uncommonly mild and I contemplated removing my sweater. I didn’t. I walked on, into the neighbouring village of Cark, the name on the station boards. A swirling, swooshing sound turned out to be a fast-running stream running under the road and through the centre of the village. I returned the way I had come. I sat on a bench in Flookburgh, under a signpost, watching cars playing Scalextrix in the narrow lanes. They roared to a halt at the crossroads and swung right into a black maw outwith the reach of the sodium lamps. A woman walked into the fish shop. The assistant didn’t look up. An estate car drew up and a man and a woman joined the first woman in the shop. All emerged, clutching piping-hot packages, five minutes later, and went their own separate ways. I wanted to stay, but a fresh breeze from the sea blew at the back of my neck and chilled me, so I set off back to the caravan. I thought that the village seemed to meld with the surrounding countryside, evolving along with it, not having been built upon it. It seemed to frown at me from within the rocks and fields that encompassed it, enveloped it, consumed it. I shivered: my overarching impression one of indescribable loneliness and bleakness. It was a disconcerting and creepy feeling. I have rarely felt such an outsider anywhere.