[00:01.000] 作词:Alasdair MacLean
[00:02.000] 作曲:The Clientele,Alasdair MacLean
[00:05.342]"In those days, there was a kind of fever that pushed me out of the front door, into the pale,
[00:09.522]exhaust-fumed park by Broadwater Farm or the grubby road that eventually leads to Enfield:
[00:15.216]turkish supermarket after chicken restaurant after spare car part shop.
[00:19.187]Everything in my life felt like it was coming to a mysterious close:
[00:22.687]I could hardly walk to the end of a street without feeling there was no way to go except back.
[00:27.154]The dates I’d had that summer had come to nothing,
[00:29.766]my job was a dead end and the rent cheque was killing me a little more each month.
[00:33.711]It seemed unlikely that anything could hold much longer.
[00:36.428]The only question left to ask was what would happen after everything familiar collapsed,
[00:41.417]but for now the summer stretched between me and that moment.
[00:43.977]
[00:44.787]It was ferociously hot,
[00:46.276]and the air quality became so bad that by the evening
[00:48.914]the noise of nearby trains stuttered in in fits and starts,
[00:53.277]distorted through the shifting air.
[00:55.523]As I lay in the cool of my room,
[00:58.292]I could hear my neighbours discussing the world cup and opening beers in their gardens.
[01:00.904]On the other side, someone was singing an Arabic prayer through the thin wall.
[01:04.901]I had no money for the pub so I decided to go for a walk.
[01:07.905]
[01:09.028]I found myself wandering aimlessly to the west,
[01:11.928]past the terrace of chip and kebab shops and laundrettes near the tube station.
[01:16.160]I crossed the street, and headed into virgin territory - I had never been this way before.
[01:20.836]Gravel-dashed houses alternated with square 60s offices,
[01:24.493]and the wide pavements undulated with cracks and litter.
[01:27.680]I walked and walked, because there was nothing else for me to do,
[01:30.684]and by degrees the light began to fade.
[01:32.878]
[01:33.897]The mouth of an avenue led me to the verge of a long,
[01:36.483]greasy A-road that rose up in the far distance,
[01:39.357]with symmetrical terraces falling steeply down then up again from a distant railway station.
[01:45.313]There were four benches to my right,
[01:47.611]interspersed with those strange bushes that grow in the area,
[01:50.093]whose blossoms are so pale yellow they seem translucent, almost spectral; and suddenly tired,
[01:55.056]I sat down.
[01:56.885]I held my head in my hands, feeling like ****,
[01:59.758]but a sudden breeze escaped from the terraces and for a moment
[02:02.606]I lost my thoughts in its unexpected coolness.
[02:05.897]I looked up and I realised I was sitting in a photograph.
[02:08.901]
[02:10.260]I remembered clearly:
[02:11.879]this photograph was taken by my mother in 1982, outside our front garden in Hampshire.
[02:16.529]It was slightly underexposed. I was still sitting on the bench,
[02:19.820]but the colours and the planes of the road and horizon had become the photo.
[02:24.496]If I looked hard,
[02:26.194]I could see the lines of the window ledge in the original photograph were now composed
[02:28.545]by a tree branch and the silhouetted edge of a grass verge.
[02:32.751]The sheen of the flash on the window was replicated
[02:35.233]by bonfire smoke drifting infinitesimally slowly from behind a fence.
[02:40.117]My sister’s face had been dimly visible behind the window,
[02:43.409]and -yes- there were pale stars far off to the west that traced out the lines of a toddler’s eyes and mouth.
[02:49.731]
[02:50.070]When I look back at this there’s nothing to grasp, no starting point.
[02:52.395]I was inside an underexposed photo from 1982 but I was also sitting on a bench in Haringey.
[02:59.344]
[03:00.232]Strongest of all was the feeling of 1982-ness: dizzy, illogical,
[03:04.829]as if none of the intervening disasters and wrong turns had happened yet.
[03:08.617]I felt guilty, and inconsolably sad. I felt the instinctive tug back - to school,
[03:14.103]the memory of shopping malls, cooking, driving in my mother’s car.
[03:18.178]All gone, gone forever.
[03:19.249]
[03:20.424]I just sat there for a while. I was so tired that I didn’t bother trying to work out what was going on.
[03:25.492]I was happy just to sit in the photo while it lasted,
[03:28.392]which wasn’t for long anyway: the light faded, the wind caught the smoke,
[03:31.866]the stars dimmed under the glare of the streetlamps.
[03:34.635]I got up and walked away from the squat little benches and an oncoming gang of kids.
[03:38.475]
[03:39.363]A bus was rumbling to my rescue down the hill, with a great big ‘via Alexandra Palace’ on its front,
[03:45.502]and I realised I did want a drink after all."