NIGHT 4

Night 4: Monday 21 November. Hilary and Dan.

Well it’s not night quite yet but it is pretty dark and miserable. The rain hasn’t stopped since waking up and now the wind has picked up speed. I found Dan planning to erect his tent and vetoed it – pleading him not to do it. I now check wind speeds and these are in the early 30s. The lamps have blown down and the plastic sheeting flaps wildly. It feels way colder than before and I am not looking forward to this night. I have tied everything down but still.  George isn’t well. People getting sick all around us. If one of us comes down with something that will be now good. Dan mentions that according to studies crowd funders often start off with big momentum and then hit a lull. Please don’t let that happen. Or at least if it does let there be a lull in the bad weather. It is November. What did we expect.  I ‘ve ordered some A0 posters to fill our bedroom windows with ‘every home a POWER STATION ‘and ‘crowdfunder.co.uk / power-station’ so that when people look up the message is there. I tweet into a void. Twitter is broken.  We gather photos for the Observer article and prep for more press. Positive News are in touch. I’ve asked Phil to help format the back of a postcard to send to print so we can start writing our postcards from the rooftops. It’s 16.31 and darkness is here now. I should turn the lights on but they’re on the ground. I ‘ll get out of wet jeans and see what’s possible.  37 gusts.Too strong for standard lamps.  Back and forth in the dark to collect E from sports. The evening ritual begins. Get everyone fed and to bed. Ideally take position early but weather forecast shows wind subsiding in an hour so bedtime might be past 7.30pm tonight. I ‘ve been so busy I ‘m still in wet jeans. Rookie mistake.

Wow 20.09. Officially the winds have meant to have subsided but up here it doesn’t feel like it. I must admit I don’t like it. Nearby scaffolding creaks. The light and shadows dance. I am on edge. On an edge. It seems darker tonight. The sky is closer to black than it has been on previous nights. Dogs bark. I look for the moon but can’t see it. G has always spotted the moon even on the brightest days when it sits alongside the sun. I really don’t like this. The bed creaks. George keeps popping his head out of the loft window to ask where things are. He wants someone with him tonight and I think one of us should be. I don’t mind being out here on my own if I know they’re all safe inside though may not sleep much until the gusting stops.

I always want to sleep from dawn until mid morning. It might be a hangover from days of night shifts – living nocturnally and rolling home as the day begins, resting with the comforting sounds of others going about their lives - but that’s never allowed in this routine. Last night E talked of the war in Ukraine. It has affected her deeply – the idea that there are people in her school that had to leave everything, whose homes were destroyed, who might never go back. Looking up at the lights on passing planes, we talked of travel and where I’d been and where we’d both like to go. She asks if I ‘ve been to Warsaw and I say once -  on a wind band trip where all the guides on the compulsory tours said ‘this is a reconstruction’ after the devastation of WW2.  

I think of Dorothy who lived at 150 Lynmouth Road her whole life. She turned 100 last November and we gathered on the street for bubbles and a glimpse of the holographic card from the Queen. As a young women, she was in the 93rd Searchlight Regiment – an all female British air defence unit in WW2 trained to spot and illuminate enemy aircraft. Walthamstow suffered 776 bombings and 1,449 air raid warnings. In this exposed position it isn’t difficult to imagine incoming aircraft releasing bombs on these suburbs so close to industrial targets – the spot the difference gaps in the streets are testament to it. We think we wouldn’t want to be on top of the house for that but then we wouldn’t want to be under it either.

I look up from the laptop’s glare and the long terrace gardens leading down to railway tracks look even darker by contrast. Sarah sends a lovely message of encouragement. She also mentions her children had seen us from the train and that her youngest had said that she hadn’t realised we were up here for more than a night and we should be careful not to break a leg or arm. Yes we should. I don’t like the precarious feeling the wind brings. Terra firma is attractive. There are lots of messages of love and support and they are really appreciated.

I think this is the clearest night and in turn the coldest. Forecast says humidity 80% not in the 90s and the damp mist has been blown away. It’s odd. All the residencies I’ve applied to and yearned  for – from being in Derek Jarman’s Dungeness shack to a container ship crossing the Pacific are happening after all in this action so close to home. Tame but slightly terrifying at times.  As if on que - as I write that sentence the wind gusts and the lamps shudder and fall over. Lights out. Just as Dan tries to get a shot from the street. Can’t get it working. Possibly a wire pulled out of place. Will check in daylight. The gusts are strong and the remaining lampshade bobs around on the cusp of failure. I get ready to abandon ship.

The wind began to lessen by 10pm. We hunkered down and looked up at the stars. We filmed and took photos keeping on top of updates from this elevated den and feel appalled to  find ourselves filming what may be in the feature documentary on a mobile phone. Needs must up here. We bring the full kit up and down. A battery here and a card there shoved through the window, keeping on top of the digital maintenance and finding the cold deplete battery life in record time. We see a bright green light shoot across the sky. It seems way to close to be a shooting star. Dan films the sky and the footage revealed a dancing light that suddenly dips out of view. Unidentified flying objects abound.   I can’t believe Dan is fast asleep snoring whilst I lie there staring at the sky and holding onto the tarpaulin as it flaps in sudden squalls as the wind changes direction.