NIGHT 10
Night 10, Sunday 27 November 2022
Night came fast. We say good morning to neighbours and realise its 3.30pm. We’re buoyed by the fact that the crowdfunder is moving and the wind is lessening. All is grey. I remember the November poems we were made to compose in primary school. No Sun. No Moon. November. I realise I haven’t seen the moon for a while. It is a waxing crescent but invisible to us. One comment on the crowdfunder sees in the rooftop action a stark warning of what may come if we do nothing and millions of homes are lost to rising sea levels. We live with these premonitions of future flood. Floods happening right now, barely reported but causing such trauma and loss. Of all our roof related inspirations I love Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Ghost Dog’ in which a samurai keeps pigeons whilst his neighbour builds an Ark of sorts on the rooftops of New Jersey. I had considered a boat not a bed. I fell in love with one on Ebay with iron stained sails and a ‘Swallows and Amazons’ swagger. In retrospect I ‘m glad we went with the bed as those sails would certainly have caught the wind.
I towel dry the trusty tarpaulin and angle myself into the sleeping bag with a sigh. I love this sleeping bag. I resisted but I’m glad Dan forced this gift onto me. I’ m enveloped in its warmth. Geese fly overhead unseen but honking. The sky has an odd pink glow which prompts me to check the forecast in case I’ve missed news of a storm. I breath deeply. We’ve promised ‘postcards from the rooftops’ but now the messages are inbound too and they’re appreciated. I look at the TV aerials and wonder if they are obsolete. Apparently not. I’ve always been attracted to them – these metal sentries reaching out to pick up invisible signals, transmitting and reassembling voices and images into our homes below. So much so, as a teenager, I made my Dad come with me around the scrap metal yards of North Wales to collect as many as possible and proceeded to arrange these on the rain shadowed, windswept beach of our home town and cine film the waves rising around them. Another cold and wet process. I’m not sure the ‘art’ I made with them at the time was much good but there was something about them and the electromagnetic waves they channel that fascinated me. Nothing is static, the air itself laden with communications and, in the case of tonight, an awful lot of moisture.
Dan does all the mailouts so I often carry on working unaware of any encouraging words until or if he tells me. I’ve liked hearing from people around the country - walking dogs, sharing tales of ancestry, discussing the weather. I’m told of one man’s brother who’s slept outside by the side of a loch on the Isle of Rum for the last 25 years - hearing the cries of oyster catchers, curlew and heron whilst in three sleeping bags. It is a strange treat to go to sleep staring up at the sky and one I could get used to if combined with the knowledge of warmth and shelter nearby. The crowdfunder is moving up and as it approaches 10pm on Sunday night we re at 90% - £45,020!
Dans brother J and Sal have been in constant touch willing us on all the way from Geneva -birthplace of the League of Nations and home of the accelerated particles of the hadron collider. They talk about how their Mum would have been both scared and egging us on from above. A star. Clouds obscure the stars tonight but I think of her. I’m not too sure she’d approve but she’d do her best. My parents may not either but are also doing their best - have always done their best to understand and support whilst wondering ‘where did you come from?’ Where did we all come from? All of us little miracles. I always loved to hear their stories of childhood - my Dad’s daring do on the slag heaps and estuaries of South Wales, my Mum’s candlelit bedtimes, lard on toast, terrifying turkeys and Liverpool on fire. How do we all fit on this planet? – generations and generations of ancestors bursting with stories. Layer upon layer of life. All of us stardust turning to dust. A planet glowing like some vast bioluminescent lake alive with the light of billions of souls. On a clear night looking up at the stars Dan asks ‘does the realisation of the vastness of it all made you feel insignificant?’ No. It makes each of our lives on earth seem all the more precious.
There is some kind of fox fight / love going on. I’m surprised how quiet a city of 9.5 million can sometimes be. All these lives. The beauty and the horror behind closed doors. Or out on the street with no doors to close. Gina just sent a lullaby - I play it from my phone and her beautiful voice sings out across the rooftop saying ‘everything’s going to be alright’ - a song from a guardian angel. I hope that message reaches the children below me and a neighbour I heard crying and all the people here struggling or not. I hope it reaches everyone. I listen to people undertaking the final bedtime routines of door locking and checking. It is so still. I know there will be many not sleeping - working all night, adapting to nocturnal life. The children say why can’t we just have a normal job but I wonder what normal is. Sirens pierce the calm as ambulance crews travel to their next incident, an electric taxi glides to a halt outside - all working to a different schedule, all with complex lives. It’s the geese again. I wish them safe travels as they face their own pandemic.
We awake and pillows, hats and any protruding areas are totally soaking. It hasn’t rained. It is thick dew. Dripping from the bed frame and our faces. It is not a good feeling. But the dawn is glowing and it is not only the weather that is looking good. The crowdfunder is rising rapidly – it’s at around £47,000. We will now face the decision – reach £50,000 and come straight off the roof or carry on until the Aviva match funding target of £50,000 is reached (their input currently at around £20,000). We know we do need more to pay for the solar and make sure we can do all the work to ensure it moves rapidly to the next streets. We’d always aimed for £100,000 but had misunderstood how the match funding would work thinking we’d get to £50,000 at which point the Aviva match would be triggered and hey presto - £100,000. Instead Aviva has been matching as we go. Hmm….
Today BBC London News are coming to the street to report from on the ground whilst we’re up above. That could be amusing. The sun is out and the bed and bedding needs some maintenance. There’s a 50% chance of rain just when they’ll be here at the magic hour.
A newspaper article is headlined ‘Mum and Dad living on roof in fight over £50k solar panels.’
Mum and Dad. Wow. Maybe we can turn that around and use it/own it. Artist duo ‘Mum and Dad.’ At least its more comic than ‘filmmaker and wife.’
