I wake at the unfamiliar hour to animal sounds. Noises like foxes fighting; exotic screeches carried down the street by wind or proximity. You are asleep until I stick my head out of the window, peering left and right past the dawn-bathed terraced houses.
“That sound,” I say.
“Cats?” you say. Fall asleep again. I go into the bathroom, where the window overlooks a single street lamp. As I am watching it, through the blinds, observing the sallow glow against the almost-bright morning sky, it goes out. Apart from the emptiness it might be mid-morning.

Back in bed, the fox-sounds have stopped. Now it’s only birds. Doves? In that way that early-morning birds have of making repetitive songs with their hoots and growls, they are like the worst pop song on the radio. Over and over again in my head (I’ll forget the tune by afternoon). You are still asleep, and I ponder getting up, going outside, to see the street before anyone else sees it. Sunday mornings are best for this; no early commuters whistling past on bicycles, smugly more productive. All the drunks have gone to bed. For the first time in a long time I perceive how ugly all the cars are, lined up nose-to-tail, cows going to slaughter, in various shades of modern, various kinds of disrepair. There was one last year with a smashed-in window, that sat on the corner of Leopold Street and Hurst, and for months if you wanted to walk past it you had to pick your way through broken green glass. The houses still look bare–even the ones with gardens out front are still suffering the effects of winter gloom.

The thing about this street is, it wears its shabbiness well. Last night as we rounded the corner I said to you how I fond I was of the place where our street meets Magdalen road–of the pub with her bicycle rack, her evening-yellow windows, the red-and-green facades of the bookshop and the café, the weary half-rendered lettering of Silvesters (“E TERS STORES”), with its pots, its herbs, its kitchenware.

Not a soul about this morning, and as I try to fall asleep my mind is suddenly full of a Boston autumn, the crispness of the Charles River and the smell of rich people’s houses in the Back Bay. Couldn’t be further from where we are now. I close my eyes to picture the promenade in October better, the strange dome of the half-shell in afternoon light, the runners, the girls in skirts and light coats, stretching the days of sensible dressing out as long as possible. I think for certain I won’t fall asleep but I do, with you and the pop-songs of the morning birds and the empty river of street that runs between James and Magdalen.

❧

This morning, after we awoke to the sounds of an electric guitar and feeling of two terriers bouncing on our bed, after we packed the kids off to school (no, not our kids and no, not our terriers), after we cleaned up the puppy poo from the floor and loaded the dishwasher (alas, also not our dishwasher–a dishwasher being in my mind the height of domestic luxury) and bought cinammon rolls from the shop next door, we indulged, whilst waiting for a taxi to take us back to our real life in Oxford, in some television.

Some people, channeling fond memories of childhood, might opt for cartoons or sitcoms, but as the Man and I were not television children, and neither are we in the least bit ordinary, our greatest TV pleasure is anything that has to do with houses. Programs about selling houses, buying them, rennovating them, decorating them, living in them: it doesn’t matter. We both seem to have this sickening need to scoff at how badly other people have designed their bathrooms, and/or drool over their opportunities for buying (and therefore fixing up) property.

This morning it was a program called “Wanted Down Under“. A family was trying to decide whether or not they wanted to stay in Britain or make the move to Australia, and we followed them on a house-hunting expedition, slightly sullen teenage son in tow. Then it was “Axe the Agent”, which, sadly, we only got middway through before our cab arrived. The family with the seven-bedroom house had just finished cleaning it up, but I still wouldn’t buy it (too reminiscant of the sprawling ultra-new California mansions I loathed as a youth).

I don’t know quite what it says about us that the sort of television we most enjoy watching is on at 10 am on a weekday morning.

❧

It’s another grey-skied lapsang souchong Thursday.

The Man fixed the electricity problem. I do love men, don’t you?

I’ve got three blog posts to write today. (Yes, I really am sticking to a schedule). I’ve spent the morning doing anything but work. I’m organizing old photos and music. I plan on making lists at some point, lots and lots of lists, but I haven’t even begun thinking about the lists. I’m watching the birds dig around in the wasteland that is our back garden in winter. They’re sending dead leaves and wet twigs everywhere.

My books for next term arrived yesterday. I’m quite excited to read W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, but otherwise I’m unimpressed. Beloved I read years and years ago and despised. I hope I was wrong about it, that I was just being a snotty teenager, but as I recall, my general impression was, why does Toni Morrison have to write like this?

I’m digging KCRW this morning. My tea is just the right drinking temperature and I’m bobbing my head around to the Dandy Warhols and Loudon Wainwright, and Michael Franti. Not the most promising way to start a day meant to be rife with accomplishment, but good fun anyway. I’ll check back later.

❧

I’m up much earlier than usual today. I’ve had my breakfast and now I’m sipping tea. I’d like to say I’m enjoying the view (it’s a beautiful blue-sky morning and I can even hear a few brave birds chirping) but there’s an enormous black and orange truck parked outside the lounge window, so, you know.

These days I’m…

Listening to…Ray LaMontagne.

Watching…30 Rock. Recently we’ve particularly enjoyed their rendering of Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and also James Carville’s guest appearance (I couldn’t find a YouTube clip of that), though as he’s aged he has started to look increasingly like a character from Lord of the Rings and it’s hard to believe that when I first saw The War Room I actually found him weirdly sexy. That was definitely a triumph of brains over brawn.

Reading…Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. Let me explain: ever since I met him, the Man’s been going on about how funny Terry Pratchett is, and reading me excerpts from the only two Pratchett books in the house (I’d like to draw your attention to that number–two–so you don’t get the idea that the Man is a Terry Pratchett fanatic of some sort), and I’ve been duly ignoring his suggestions that I have a go at reading one, paying more attention to my eBay adiction or whatever book I did happen to be reading at the time. The Man likes to read Pratchett before bedtime–make that re-read, for the five-hundredth time, probably–and I’ve gotten used to seeing his book covers as they slump down onto my pillow and the Man slips into sleep. I even bought him two new Pratchett books this Christmas, partly because I knew he’d enjoy them but also partly because I’d gotten really tired of looking at the same two book covers all the time.

I didn’t actually consider reading one until I got sick last week and couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to find a suitable book. So I reached over and grabbed Going Postal, and you know what? It’s really, really, quite good. I keep reading the funniest bits out loud to the Man, who tries to hide the look on his face that says, yes, that’s great, I’ve actually read you that passage before and you ignored me. Last night I told him I was thinking of putting this into a blog post and he said, “so it’s basically a blog post about me being right?” and I said, “yes, yes it is.” So there you go.

Ugly truck update: two men got in and drove it away a few minutes ago. The birds are chirping with increasing authority and bravado, but the blue sky appears to be diminishing. But none of that matters, especially, because by this evening, we’re going to have a new POTUS, and man, that makes me happy.

Now I have to get off the couch and go to work.

❧