I am on a train just outside Waterloo Station. It is packed with commuters—I am lucky to have got a window seat. I look out over the ridges and furrows of railway tracks, bunching into a thick brown swathe as they approach the terminus. Through the gaps between office buildings, I glimpse the silver skeleton of the London Eye.
I am dreaming my journey to work. When the train pulls into platform 2, I am swept out of the carriage and over the concourse by a surge of dark suits. Everyone seems purposeful and determined, carrying briefcases and bags, and walking in the same direction. I am borne down the steps into York Road, under the railway, and up on to Hungerford Bridge.
The panorama of London opens out around me—the Southbank Centre behind and to my right, the Houses of Parliament upstream on the opposite bank, Embankment Gardens, Charing Cross Station, the Savoy Hotel. The huge grey Thames, plunging through the centre of the city, creates a glorious canyon of light, distance and rushing air, an antidote to boxy offices and car-packed streets.
In my dream the sky above me is full of bustling white clouds, and the river beneath me seethes with porpoises and whales, rolling and basking, and suddenly surfacing, so that water pours down their smooth grey sides.
I speed over the bridge, full of confidence and hope. I know I’ve been away from work, but I’m sure I’m better now. I enter my office through huge gold-coloured doors which swing open at my approach. But my colleagues appear to be the same. “Glad to see you back,” they say. “There’s a lot on at the moment. The Minister needs a briefing paper by ten o’clock. We’ve set you up in a desk in the corner, so you can keep the overhead lights switched off.”
“That’s sensible,” I think. I go to my desk, settle into my chair and turn on my machine.
But I can’t make it work. Things come up on the screen that I didn’t type in at the keyboard. Files and applications open and close randomly. The mouse is recalcitrant under my hand, while the cursor zips round the screen. Thousands of emails pour down upon me.
I wake up in a panic. “I must get that computer sorted out,” I think. “But at least I got to work. That was pretty good.” Then I open my eyes into darkness, and realise that I have gone nowhere, and remember that I am not even in London any more.
And I think back to the life I had before, a life of very ordinary components, with the usual balance of frustration and contentment, the standard complement of light and shade. And I remember the beginnings of the darkness, and where it planted its first roots, smack into the centre of that life.