Author S. K. Nicholas

Those bus journeys to towns and villages as quaint and typically English as the music of Nick Drake. Time stands still in such places. The world stops, and the cities you read about in the papers are as distant and unreal as your dreams. Much of my childhood was spent travelling to and from these idyllic locations and the stillness they contained. The ornaments in my great-grandmother’s house. The decades-old patterned wallpaper. The biscuit tins dating from the 50’s adorned with the faces of beaming weird kids. They speak to me as much as they did when they were right there before my very eyes. That stillness. It soothed my soul when I was young, and it soothes me now. Modern life had no place in my younger years, and it has little appeal for me as an adult. Those that crawl towards the dim lights of modernity- whatever. Give me trees and fields that never change. Give me the mother’s milk of indifference to a world of false ideas and opaque idols as meaningless as those who follow them. Pick me up in your car and take me to a church in the sticks and marry me. Let’s do it without glamour or money. Let’s get lost and leave it all behind while singing the words to River Man while drunk on love and a dozen bottles of warm German beer. Those words, they remind me of waiting for dinner after school at my grandparents’ house while staring up at the sun. They remind me of reading old newspapers while listening to the rain come down outside on Sunday afternoons that never seemed to end. On those days, Monty dog would often be resting by my feet while looking through the patio door so sullenly. With his chin on his paw, I’d tell him I was sorry that he couldn’t go out, and in his own way, I think he knew it wasn’t my fault. That stillness. I’ve seen it in your eyes, and I’ve seen it down so many lonely roads that have called my name over the past few years. These years I’ve dedicated to creating doors. Doors to places that wish to welcome me back, and doors to lands I’ve never seen. And that one door, that one door you’re standing behind which I can never seem to find.

A Journal for Damned Lovers Volumes 1 & 2 on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers Volumes 1 & 2 on Amazon.com