The Ned Wood Archive

The white ship has sailed

and left me here again

H P Lovecraft

I’m in the coffee bar, sat next to the Juke Box, cup of tea in my hand, listening to the Adverts or maybe it was the Clash or the Damned whatever and I’m watching all the folk I don’t know pass by and get on with their lives.  I’m pretending to work, meaning I’ve got my nose in my folder, but I’m just watching. This must be late morning, 12 or so, because the coffee bar is getting busy. But no-one I know is here. There is a wonderful solitude being in a crowd of folk you don’t know.  If, like the bloke said, Hell is other people, so solitude must be paradise. Solitude whether it is truly being on your own like on top of a cliff in north Cornwall or climbing up the old oak at home and looking out on all creation or whether it is being alone in the midst of a mass of humanity passing by ignoring you. Waterloo station or the coffee bar at lunchtime.  Both give you the emptiness to think your own thoughts.  Both give you the space to empty your mind. Sitting doing nothing is freedom. Sitting on your own doing nothing is Heaven.

Then Annie comes in and sits next to me and proves us wrong, me and Sartre both.  Heaven is sat next to Annie in the Coffee Bar drinking tea and listening to One Chord Wonders.