disc

I bought a frisbee this morning. It's purple. I don't own many purple things, unless you count red wine. And that varies, really. Several shades of red and purple, depending on its age and grape and all manner of variables. But some of them are definitely purple. Grenache tends to have a purple hue. Pinot Noir not so much. 

I bought the frisbee because they never tend to last the winter months. I don't know what happens to them in the meantime. Lost in a season of disuse. I wonder if there's some graveyard of winter frisbees; some dilapidated pile of multi-coloured discs dusted with a fine layer of snow that will never melt. It's an odd thought, I suppose. 

Though I've had odder. 

Last night the wine flowed along with the beer and the whisky and the gin. The guitar strummed and many a string broke. The Guinness tasted good, as did the Springbank. Our banter drifted along happily. The bar was hot, but not too hot. We never waited long to get served. 

I caught a pretty girl's eye and then, later, she caught mine. There was nothing in it. Just noticing, being noticed. 

We got home, three flatmates, in time to open a bottle of wine and finish a bottle of whisky and banter more. Heavier this time, deeper. We paused occasionally to watch drunks wander home, clad in ball gowns and black tie. Placing bets on the couples, watching the spats, laughing at the hapless. We may have been as drunk as them, but we'd won already. We were home. Memories and the future both thrown onto the table, talked about loosely, as we were loose. 

This morning my flip-flops slipped on and my face felt a touch numb. 

I remembered summers, stumbling down to the beach. Heads pounding, maybe a tad dizzy. We'd throw the frisbee around like lunatics. Diving catches, great leaps, acts of heroism for girls that weren't there. The sky so blue and the sea cold and inviting. The pop of the first beer bottle opened rang out and we'd take a break, slick with sweat. We'd try to remember the night before. A night like last night. Then the disk flew again and we'd fall, rend the skin from our limbs on the course sand close to the water. 

Breathless, bleeding, soaking, we sat again and sipped. Hangovers evaporated, sweat stung the eyes. We clinked bottles and cursed work and weather for making life anything but that; what we had then. 

So I bought a frisbee this morning.

white space

It's not a hangover. I didn't drink enough for that. There's no pain or sense of displacement. Just a touch of weariness and discontent with working all day. 

I find it's days like this I want to write. I want to write everyday, obviously. But days like this in particular I miss just writing. No stealing a sentence here and there, in the midst of pretending to do a job. No looking at my desk at the end of a long day and ignoring it, killing the guilt of not writing with a glass of wine and Scrubs reruns. No excuses. An espresso, a cup of tea, a pint of water and the endless patter of the keyboard. The screen filling with words, white space consumed by more and more black characters. Looking at my word count, knowing my place, the story's place, and knowing when my day's work was done. Not looking at a clock and longing for time to speed up. 

The sun's been around a wee while now. New flip-flops, old shorts and t-shirts and my summer uniform's in place. There's a chill in the shadows though. A bitterness when the sun slips behind a cloud. Tendrils of sea mist, the haar, drift in from the water, cooling the sun-soaked streets. Folk hug themselves and wish they'd brought jumpers, jackets, anything. They feel deceived as the sun turns into a silver disc, veiled in the fog. 

It doesn't come until after lunch, the haar. Sitting on the beach with a bottle of whisky as the sun rises in the east. Maybe a beer or two. The sky's clear then, as the fiery disc rises from the water in the distance. It's all the clarity to be had, and I drink it in with the whisky, with the beer. The tendrils of mist are yet to come.

I'm not hungover. I'm not even tired.  Just a little weary, and a little discontent.