Solitude

Leave me. I want to be alone.
When I need somewhere to be alone, but I am not quite ready to face the four gloomy walls of my room, I meander through the streets. I know from experience that there is no peace to be had in Leicester. The only place I can go is the Cathedral courtyard. Even there, passers-by come and go every few minutes.
I stand by the buttresses, or sit on a piece of masonry - a mourning statue of an angel clad in black - and try to wear an expression of deep melancholy. The same expression on the face of John Keats when he composed his Ode to the bird of infinite melancholy.
Inside the quaint, hipped spire (as Hardy would have put it) the great bells of Leicester chime the hour, the quarter hour, the half hour, three quarters and the next hour. I sit below them, but perceive them as clearly as if they were inside my temples.
I feel a true Leicesterian under the great Cathedral spire. I serpentine between the benches and headstones, gazing up at architecture chiseled by very curious hands. Hands that had to be strong enough to drive a chisel into the depths of the stone block, yet delicate enough to fashion the intricacies of Simon De Montfort's nose and Gabriel Newton's curls. Two pairs of hands metamorphosed into one. A physical paradox.
Many a reverie is ardently pursued under the proud bosom of the spire. Even if my own Pagan religion rejects such organisation, such architecture, such materialism. When I am alone, however, it hardly matters if I am in awe of an architectural tribute to Christianity. The statues were, after all, fashioned by the hands of man, not by the hands of God.