Thursday June 20, 2019

The solstice approaches. Time to wake and greet the dawn. After morning meditation on the floor of the flat, I venture out to grab a sandwich and pastry at a nearby cafe. Workers in hardhats mend the facade of a building from a scaffold across the way. Property values dictate endless construction under the present regime. Commuters hurry past smoking, vaping, interacting with their phones. My flatmates meet me at the Farringdon Station, bleary-eyed students in tow, the lot of us then boarding a train for a brief outing to Essex. We arrive to Mistley, a small port town, air thick with the smell of malt. A local woman named Josie leads us on a tour, sharing with us her research on the seventeenth century witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins. We cross the village green and journey along a public footpath, Josie filling our ears with juicy lore related to Old Knobbley and a ghostly hound named Black Shuck. After the tour, I retire to a pub and down a few pints of Guinness, mood darkened by lack of magic.