NIGHT 2
Night 2: Saturday 19th November 2022. Hilary and Dan.
Is it night 2? It’s 16.00 on Saturday 19th November and it’s getting dark so that counts as night falling.
Seagulls are reeling and flocking - heading towards their urban cliffs – where do they sleep? The lights on the top of the HSCB tower of docklands are visibly flashing now. Hannah Disco Dickens who painted our POWER STATION sign when we opened for greenback printing in the local substation front/gallery just waved up. It’s really nice having these chats from/with the street. Anna the Observer journalist is being a roving reporter down below visiting different residents to hear their angle on the project.
Checking in on the crowdfunder we’re at £4,330 – 8% of the total of £50,000 we’re aiming to meet and exceed. Let’s do this. I need to make a poster for the windows below but another neighbour also suggested putting the crowdfunder address somehow big up here. Will work on that tomorrow. I’m hungry. This morning, Brian from Organic Lea cycled past with a luminous jacket aptly saying ‘electricity,’ asked if we’d like breakfast and proceeded to drop off a delicious water melon and some cinnamon and raison bagels. He’s been an ally from the start and it’s great the food co-op is expanding and beginning to test ways of working on our street / every street. Boys kicking footballs wave up. I overhear snippets of conversations, try not to be nosy as neighbours go about their business, try not to feel too exposed as I go about mine typing this basically on display. Anna emerges from a house and is off home. Dan’s been playing fortnite with E, making food and bringing home doughnuts so we’re not totally absent from their lives in this strange period.
A crow seems put out by my presence. I think it’s the same crow as last night. I can just make out the floodlighting on the nearby football pitches where Coppermill Swifts FC train. In the first step of fulfilling on the promise on our ‘greenback’ banknotes to share funds and resources with all the local organisations featured on them we sponsored their under 11 Girls team. They’ve just shared a beautiful film of the green kit with POWER STATION written on the front with us. Joanne (who’s consistently supported the project with help securing the printing space) let them know what the project was about and shared an idea that went down well - that they were all little sun fuelled power stations too. Girls full of energy and power.
We eat takeaway pizza on the rooftop. Dan says I’m like a decrepit bed bound great aunt which we all agree is a bit rude – we’re forced to stay in the bed like Charlie’s (of Chocolate Factory fame) grandparents because it’s the only place to really be with any warmth up there.
Ok that was a night. The weather forecast was unexpectedly accurate. It began to rain at 3am and has just stopped for a moment this morning of Sunday 20th November to allow us time to get all the wet covers off into the house and set up a potentially slightly better method – a string across the bed to keep the plastic tarpaulin off the covers more tent like -though leaving a big space near our heads open with leakage possible/inevitable without some more ingenuity. We kept warm most of the night but the wet seeped into the pillows, started puddling at our feet and then my hat got soaked somehow and after that the chill infiltrated - though not that badly. I dream Dan is prime minister and the security services and military don’t let me near him in a world apart. Looking at my finger holding up the plastic as water runs down the clear surface I reminisce about Iceland at 19 – my friend and I taking it in turns to hold our broken tent up/down on a glacial outwash plain in minus temperatures. Ah Iceland – Dan muses, taking on his ‘Withnail and I’ persona. We wonder if it’s the sound of the raindrops on the plastic that makes it seem more rainy than it is but poking our heads out to check – it’s pretty rainy. The evening was beautiful, a damp mist clung to the string of red lights that mark the cranes on multiple horizons. Geese fly overhead and I pull out the camera to shoot them – I hope that over these nights I ‘ll get the footage I ‘ve been dreaming of – from geese to squirrels, crows and foxes. The kind of footage that needs the ‘being in one place’ that this rooftop sleeping allows. The stars are bright, regular, resounding bangs go off that sound louder than fireworks.
Dan sent a late night email out to correct the crowdfunder address and when we check in we’re at 11% - £5818. Not too bad and we’ll do everything we can to get there and ideally get off this roof before the remaining 25 days it’s showing on the crowdfunder page. Please! It’s 10 in the morning and I ‘m ravenous. In and out with wet bedding and making sure everything’s drying at the top in a moment of sunshine before I go back up again for a day shift. Could do with more sleep. Best sleep when outdoor living seems to be from dawnrise onwards if you’ve got nowhere to go and we’re not getting that.
It's 13.42. We’re at £6388 (12%). More sleep seems unlikely. After securing everything to dry in the increasing sun’s rays and breeze I lay my head down and drop off for 2 minutes only to be interrupted by the loft window opening and cries from inside. The need to tidy. To sort meals. To find things for people. But to also be visible and present on the roof. A magpie lands on the chimney and I get the camera out in time but it’s the wrong lens. Starlings alight in a nearby bush but I miss them. Planes fly overhead. I film shots across the rooftops towards the towers of docklands, cobwebs and railway line but don’t get any of the good shots that need more patience. The weather forecast is for a dryer night but chance of rain before that. I ‘ve never done detailed checks of the weather before going out but now I find myself on the met office interactive weather maps watching the pixelated fronts moving across the country and surrounding seas.
