"Outside it feels like it will rain. There is a cold wind blowing. Trafalgar Street is bleak and dark fingers of shadows icily mark our way. I feel out of time as around me autumn becomes winter. We walk closely together. Quickly and in silence - our breath marking the climb to the station. It starts to rain. Heavily. We shelter in a shop front. We face each other inches apart.

I do up another button on my black denim jacket.

The rain is now bouncing off the floor. We are well sheltered though in the shop front, snug in our cocoon. We look at each other. She seems to be daring me to make a move. Life has Moments and this is one. She's staring at me intensely but I find myself unable to cross the divide. It's just not in me. I'm twenty three and she's just nineteen yet I still can't make a move. I have no power at all. I’m like the rain running down the hill in front of me, powerless to alter course. I stand useless, devoid of direction, waiting to be shown a way."

Neil Diamond's Beard. Tim Robson 1991

(I think I'm a better writer now. Even posting the above passage, 25 years after writing it (FFS!), I've lightly edited it. Too many adverbs. Too many non-deliberate repetitions. Still; a nice scene of a Brighton now gone. A Tim that has gone. A girl that was never there.)