I’m struggling to sleep, so I’m up in the small hours thinking about what it is from today that I would like to remember.

Writing a journal is an act of claiming something back from otherwise wasted days, if nothing else.

As I close my eyes, I move through the tape of the day. Slowly at first, and then in fast forward. A lot of it was spent on my phone, typing into blank spaces below depictions of my friends’ faces, many of whom I have not seen in years but I carry with me in a little black rectangle, a direct and immediate link to their consciousnesses.

Some of these conversations were throwaway; others were insightful and made me think of things in a slightly different way than before. But writing about other, more ephemeral writing feels reductive, or at least tiresome. So let me think of something else.

I think from today I just want to record the smell of summer, the panic of memory, and the calm of the early hours of the morning in suburbia, when all is dark, all is calm and the only trains one can hear are the trains returning to the depot for a few hours of the rest.

Also, I want to remember fairy lights reflected off evening cheekbones, chilli oil on Italian pizza, and a cup of tea that tasted like home.