The condensation was running down the side of the glass, pooling into a neat, dark ring on the arm of the chair. Hot. Christ, it was hot. The fan in the corner of the front room stirred the warm air, like a guy trying to clear smoke with a wet tea towel. I took a sip of the cold brew. The ice numbed my teeth while I stared out the window with a vacant expression. A magpie pecked at something unpleasant on the tarmac.
Six o’clock. The Sunday evening graveyard shift. That’s when the head starts doing it. Don’t look at the calendar, Andy. Don’t do it. But you do, don’t you? The brain begins to wake up on Monday morning, like a scaffolding crew working in the dark. Alarm goes off. Emails. The usual circus, different clowns. Drop it, I told myself. Grab another cold one. Shut the eyes. It’s still Sunday for another six hours yet.
Yeah, brilliant advice. Except the other half of my brain wasn’t buying it. It was sitting there with its arms crossed, muttering, Is that it, then? Dragging your boots from one weekend to the next? There’s got to be more than only surviving the week.
Like what? the first half snapped back. A lottery win? A sudden burst of enlightenment on the Coventry ring road? Fucking fat chance. It’ll be a week like any other.
I grabbed my notebook from the side table, opened to a blank page, and stared at it. Nothing. Absolute desert. The pen felt heavy, like a bit of old lead piping. I thought, That’s it. The well is dry. I’ve got nothing to say about a boiling Sunday evening when the whole world is waiting for the whistle to blow. I was ready to chuck the pen onto the carpet and give up.
But then I looked at that blank page again, and it hit me. It’s funny how a dry spell in your head is exactly like the weather outside. You sit there, waiting for a big thunderstorm to clear the air or for a brilliant idea to hit you like a lightning bolt. But the rain doesn’t come. You have to look at the dirt right in front of you. You don’t need a big idea. Note the heat, the magpie on the road, and your fear of Monday. The writing is the clearing of the air.
The page wasn’t blank anymore. It had a few lines on it. Not a masterpiece, but a start.
I closed the book, feeling the paper cling to my thumb due to the humidity. I stood up, the joints giving a familiar Sunday crack, and headed back toward the kitchen. Time for another cold one out of the fridge. The week ahead hasn’t changed, but at least I’m going into the trenches with my pen ink wet.