DAYLIGHT FADING

eight | the landslide will bring you down

                       | eight: the landslide will bring you down |

                                                        or

                                    | landslide: fleetwood mac |

I spend a quiet month in Eastfields, just living a slow and steady life of music, beach walks and grocery shopping. I miss the hectic pace of touring life but the longer I stay the more I realise quite how much I needed this. As much as I love being up on a stage with a guitar, I wouldn’t trade all the nights dancing to myself with Jeff Buckley in my ears for a hundred of them.

I’ve finally had time to really sit down and write songs as well. I can already recognise the far more mature tone than the last album I wrote myself at 16. I was all extreme emotions there, my only truly introspective moment on a song about my mother.

Now, everything is far more balanced. Anger melds with hope, I walk the line between love and hate. Beautiful acoustic ballads flow into overdriven, distorted guitar songs. My fingers grow back into their full strength until I’m able to play for hours without discomfort.

My tattoos heal beautifully and I find myself appreciating the ink Gigi placed upon my skin more with each passing day. I eventually forgive myself the twisting and contorting of putting aftercare lotion onto my back and find myself grinning down at my left forearm whilst I play.

A thick, italic font spells out ‘come as you are’, the last letter flowing into part of the tribal lotus that rests at the end of those four words. I’m probably going to end up fulfilling my mother’s prophecy that I would become covered in tattoos and piercings – something she said as though it was like becoming a serial killer.

Of course because I’m at the nature of Murphy’s law, I should have guessed that my simple peace couldn’t last. Something, somewhere, had to be cosmically influenced to destroy my self-imposed exile, mainly to avoid any of Chris, Seb, Finn or Adam’s parents.

I step into the grocery shop, glad that my trip to Eastfields is at least influencing me to eat better. The only things available at the local shop are fish, fruit and vegetables, with a little selection of good local meat. Old sweets line the shelf behind the wooden counter, made in the traditional way with all natural flavourings.

I’m carrying my little supermarket basket, a wicker one they give you the first time you shop there for re-use, and I fill it with all sorts of natural goodness – salad and apples and haddock and the luxury of bacon. Not a single inch of processed crap in sight.

The cereal in my basket is wholegrain, made from the produce of local farmers. I’ve noticed the lightness and general healthy feeling in my body since I started eating much better and it’s a habit I’m promising myself I’ll keep to when I finally make my way back to London.

As I hand my basket over the counter, Mr Hudson, who owns the shop, smiles, knowing my weakness for his sweet guarantees that I buy some every time I come here for my groceries.

I eventually end up buying 200 grams of apple bon bons, pear drops and parma violets along with 10 cream soda lollipops. I’m fairly certain my sweet consumption cancels out any positive effects my healthy eating might have, but they all taste so nice I can’t help myself.

I pay for my shopping, the credit card reader appearing to be the only concession to modernity in the entire shop, and I’m about to leave the shop when I hear a loud “Lacey D’Angelo.”