I came home yesterday in the silent hour between late-night and last orders.  I’d parked my bike near the pub where the Man and I first met and as I unlocked it, and a pair of pub-goers drifted past me and around the corner, the whole world paused for a moment around me.  There were the strange spikes and unlit windows of the Bodleian, everything still against the shimmery ivory sky; and the uneven streets, the inky alley behind New College.  I went down that alley.  No sound but the din of my own breath, the occasional whisper from my bicycle wheels.  Everything quiet; everything misted.  The damp settling in frail, tiny beads.  Then vague and ghostly sounds as I approached another pair of pub-goers; I chased their voices around corners until, nearly at the High Street, I met them, passed them by, came out onto the black strip of evening activity.  The hum of a kebab van and the frantic high-heeled steps of girls going to nightclubs. Cars on the roundabout gliding from lane to lane.  The Iffley road deserted.  In honour of a friend of ours, who is moving back to her home country after a long time, I went down Denmark Street.  Then onto our own street, which had gone to sleep already, it seemed.  Maybe it was a magic mist, conjured by Puck to send lovers into healing slumber.

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Didn’t start very encouragingly. Boxed red wine in the station (“it’s like being with a rugby team,” the Man kept saying). An impromptu train switch at Reading. The night already folding in on us. I’d been at work, then caught in a downpour, then at home, then late, then not late (a kindly friend had lied about the train time so I wouldn’t miss it). It was suddenly cold again; what happened to the almost-summer of last week? Another world. I needed gloves. And maybe socks. On the tube a toddler bounced between his mother and his father, every shift on the tracks a new hazard. Many stops later (or maybe not so many; I forgot to keep track), a part of London unidentifiable to me. We walked against the wind. Fulham. You hear so much about Fulham, but until last night it was just another London name.

Past a nursing home. Everything looked suburban. Not expensive but empty, tired, devoid of spirit. Around a corner, a sudden pub. We ate round a long table. Potted shrimp, scotch eggs, salmon, terrine, soft bread. Mashed potatoes, curly kale, slabs of bleeding beef. The Man looked especially happy. “Are you happy?” I said, looking over the top of my red wine glass. “Meat,” he grinned, reminding me of my dad’s 50th birthday (picture: a barbecue pit by the beach, some friends, and nothing to eat but pounds and pounds of tri-tip, which my mother had bought thinking it was the manly food to get). I even got past my fear of meat that hasn’t been cooked so well it looks black and enjoyed the tenderness (a little).

We sat on couches after. Shared an espresso, the Man and I, with a sugar cube. Back on the tube. We all shared no-hot-food-on-the-bus-back-to-Oxford horror stories (there are many). We were on the bus back before midnight. All so civilized. At St. Clements we alighted. As always I felt cold. I had to pee. I’d fallen asleep on the coach and my neck felt bent the wrong way. At home, relief, the sighs after a long night, but also a bewildered and delighted sense that neither of us had once considered screaming in frustration, this time.

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My knowledge of electricity is so poor that I can’t even tell you what’s gone wrong with ours, only that something has. A lightbulb upstairs burned bright for a moment, there was a popping sound, and all the lights went out. We still have electricity–plug-in lights work, computers are charging happily–but our house is dark and here I sit, on the couch, having hunted for the fuse box and failed. It’s just too dark to look for a fuse box. Kind of a catch-22, that. Are we horrible people if we leave it till morning? Don’t answer that.

What I can’t decide is if I should, in present circumstances, escape by having a run. Because here’s the problem: it’s also dark outside the house. Not much of an escape; but at least I could feel the night city air on my face and pretend I had a glowing house to come home to. Here the light from candles flickers and the orange glow of streetlamps patterns the curtains, forms blocks on the walls. It’s a strange in-between feeling. I’m almost too restless to sit still; almost to restless to move.

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