song of the moment -

it’s just a drop in the ocean
a change in the weather
i was praying that you and me might end up together
it’s like wishing for rain as i stand in the desert
but i’m holding you closer than most
cause you are my heaven
- ron pope, “a drop in the ocean”

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so it’s october, again.

i felt it stronger than ever in york – stepping deliberately into piles of fallen leaves by the pavement, listening to the crunch crunch sound of crisp red and brown beneath my new boots, wrapping my jacket tighter round myself as the wind whipped at my hair and the ends of my scarf. the air up north always smells fresher, cleaner, lighter.

just like a time warp, i thought, and later said. so much i knew and loved is still there, unchanged; york hogroast, the milkshack, the starbucks near the minster, where we used to sit in the window and people-watch. i swear the shops in the town square round the fountain have barely changed at all since my first year, when i first trod the cobblestones of the shambles and marvelled at diagon alley made real. yet there is always also something haunting about it – almost tennysonian, in memoriam-esque, where i’m acutely aware that the people who made the place for me have left and moved on. and the city, as i stroll through it, is peopled with ghostly memories: shadows stealing round street corners, spectres in the doorways of shops.

leaving is always so difficult. i’ve been saying goodbye, bit by bit, piece by piece, to the dreamlike spring and summer of ‘09; yesterday was my last farewell. time to stop hanging on. time to let go.