NIGHT 13

 Night 13. Wed 30th November 2022

I seem to have missed some strange weather phenomena last night as we slept soundly for perhaps the first time since being up here. People were sharing images of almost neon pink and green skies with no readily available explanation. Tonight I am glad to see the moon. Well half of it. Sitting in perfect, photogenic position above the chimney pots. I appreciate this colder brighter day and night. I notice the lack of dew. The clarity of vision and visibility.  The dogs that come out for walks at this time of night are not the ones we see by day. An English bull terrier wearing the silky orange robes of a champion fighter plods along.  I try and eavesdrop on passing conversation but trains pass. We can’t be seen from the tracks without the light illuminating us and right now I recline tucked into my volcanic sleeping bag spot lit - performing writing to the passing trains. Motion sensor lights come on and off across gardens as nocturnal creatures emerge. Fireworks suddenly flower and bang. I scramble around to film them and just press record in time to catch the dispersing cloud of smoke.  I ‘ve been concentrating hard looking through my students work in preparation for our session tomorrow and hadn’t realised how cold I was getting. I draw the sleeping bag up around me and wish I hadn’t left my fingerless gloves inside. It’s a noisy evening. Perhaps the previous night’s mist muffled this sonic landscape as now I’m overwhelmed with sounds -  of aeroplanes, sirens, trains near and distant, the movement of bins down below that reminds me its bin day and we’ve forgotten ours. Can we measure our time up here in the number of bin days we miss.

I can see lights on in The Grange - a block of flats at the top of the road built in the 1950s after bombing destroyed Lynmouth Road 1-39. This morning we had a catch up call with Repowering London – pioneers and innovators in community owned energy. They’ve been supportive from the start and the dream plan would be to bring them into the borough working with the council on a portfolio of council owned properties.  They’ve had to work hard to develop a sustainable and scalable model. We’d love to ensure The Grange is one of the first mixed tenure housing blocks to have rooftop solar that powers the households below and not just communal areas. We ask them if they’ve cracked this yet. Not quite. But they keep on working. And so do we - working with people who are also figuring this out as they go along, dealing with the downfalls, problem solving one step at a time.  When Charlotte Johnson came to visit she talked about The Netherlands where community innovation on the ground has been used as a sandbox for government to learn from and implement not legislate against.  Dave from Repowering likens our growing collaborations and connections to mycelium networks – and they are blooming in this day full of visitors.

A crew of students of radio and film came clambering up and down ‘on location’ learning their craft and practicing their interview techniques on us. One is a member of Fossil Free London and wants to be a documentary maker. She also has a passion for astrology and correctly guesses my star sign as Virgo. Hard working. Reliable. Not the most glamorous of words. She says Dan and I are polar opposites but that I must have a lot of air in my sign. We certainly have a lot of air up here.  Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis tucked themselves under the cerise and purple welsh blanket and we talked – about the great imagining, Extinction Rebellion, artists, technology and soup. Another head pokes up above scaffold planks and Gina arrives to sing from the rooftops. Her lullaby has already been played here so it seems fitting that she should sing it live and loud from the rooftops. I go down on the street to film and meet a mother and child listening in wonder. We all clap. There was quite a lot of clapping on the street in the pandemic. People at doors and windows banging pots and pans. At New Year Sipke set off fireworks in the middle of the street and there was cheering and cheers’ing and connections made that triggered off this project. Then, we looked up at skies empty of aircraft, now, their trails criss cross the sky. Then, the quiet descended. Now, I hear football shouts and am consistently amazed at how much football is played every day and night. Then and Now are hard to distinguish. When did we emerge? How did we change? The familiar urban sounds of boy racers and buses are more comforting than silence.   

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