NIGHT 21
Night 21. Thursday 8 December 2022.
8am on a Thursday morning and I love it here in this moment. It may be cold but it’s beautiful - so beautiful. Birds fart back and forth. That was some kind of autocorrect and it has me laughing as I imagine the soundtrack to this peaceful morning. I bask in the sun. Glorious seems a good word. Frost glistens - on my pillow and the rooftops and cars below. G is off to school. I think of summer with some dread. The new summer of 40 degrees plus. Brain and body incapable. I want to insulate against this as much as any cold. Three weeks up here. Three bin days heard. A neighbour says ‘having a lie in…want to swap?’ Sipke takes a photo as I grin down from this aerial bed and says enjoy the sun. The thaw is beginning and forcing me up as heavy drops of icy water fall on me. I shake off the plastic and flakes of ice fly over blanket and sheet. Sipke shouts up and he’s got us two pain au chocolate. Hallelujah – thank you for the kind gift and recognition that to rest is ok. Work on the house two doors down begins with hammering. Birds are singing. The cat I ‘d hoped to film on the rooftop opposite has not frequented it - at least not whilst I ‘m around.
I love the Welsh blanket on top of the sleeping bag stopping the ice coming directly onto it. I love the steaming cup of tea Dan brings with butter dripping bagel. Dan’s sent an email to the MP and council with a picture of me on the bed in the frost asking them to share the campaign and get behind this. So far these are ignored. Unfortunately it also contains an image of a bucket and the only salt we could find to clear the way. Finest sea salt. I am not going to feel guilty about enjoying this. Yesterday was a big day. Tomorrow is a teaching day in White City. Today there is a lot to do but right now I am lying here watching my breath, seeing sunlight catch the ice crystals, hearing crows caw and seeing steam rising from rooftops. I wonder about acclimatising to life back inside. I poke my head out of the sleeping bag just in time to see a heron flying overhead.
In an effort to share this everywhere possible I ‘m on twitter and see Rob Hopkins sharing a quote from the book ‘ Utopianism on a Dying Planet’. “Only the extraordinary can save us.” As I prepare to go up, George sends an email “there’s something in the sky right by the moon – can you see it?” I know I should take the big camera up and film but I need to apply the layers. Before I can he mails back to say it’s a planet. He sends a link that explains that ancient stargazers knew of five planets which they called the wanderers as they had no fixed position. These nomad lights are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Wondering and wandering far from earth.
We are tired. My love of the outdoors from the morning mutates into a temporary collapse. As I write I ‘m hoping in some ways not to have a 22nd night on the rooftop but that seems unlikely. It has taken all effort to stay upright today. Taking calls and discussing PR around the Observer article out on 18 Dec and the need for some kind of finissage rather than just creeping to bed. Filming and editing. Working on the song with the team now we have all in ‘the can.’ The crowdfunder has been rising today – we are now at £89,455. Temperatures look like they’ve dropped further to feel like minus 3 and the NW wind has picked up. I don’t like that. The council map and share the locations of warm rooms around the borough. Food banks and warm rooms – evident of an abundance of care and a fractured social safety net and derelict of the duty of a government to protect its citizens. There is a tension between the value of community versus atomised survival - picking up the pieces of a broken system. I stagger to the door and we have a suprise visit from Helen and her son. She’s an artist working on nuclear culture and power - layering its history and controversy. She’s a great supporter and I was glad when Dan returned to give a more expansive welcome that my initial confused look out into the dark. The children are fed up of the door knocking and constant full house - longing for Christmas, influenced by lockdown to value and protect their nest.
I go down the garden to retrieve the rock salt that’s been gradually corroding my dexlon shelving units but that I knew would one day come in handy. I collect my cloths from various outposts inside and make the move to stuff the bedding out of the window. I check the weather. I am becoming weather and weathered.
