Things that go bump in the night

Not being the sort of person who would as a rule remember such things  I do know for a fact that today is Gollum the cats 15th birthday. Yes, a Valentine kitten and I remember going over the road to see him being born.  We will be celebrating in true Blue Peter style with an elaborate cake made from cat food ( actually we will be doing no such thing). But happy Valentine birthday you dear sweet furry friend.

Last night I kept waking up and wasn’t sure why. Then I realised. It was too quiet. It reminded me of a book about a boy called Grimble by Clement Freud ( not sure if we are still meant to admit we ever had a children’s book by him) but anyway Grimble was a latchkey kid and  his parents would leave him notes on the kitchen table each day with instructions as to whose house to visit next and who would cook him supper, so it was a mixture of a story and a cookery book. The one that we used to make was the recipe for potato pancakes which were delicious.Anyway the book starts with Grimble waking up because the trains that usually thundered past his window were not running so he was woken by the lack of noise which is a bit strange seeing as we mostly strive for silence in order to get a good nights sleep. Nowadays my nights normally consist of Radio 4 interspersed with snoring interludes ( not mine)
and then as we get towards morning the sound of birds, bin men, cars and schoolkids. The normal sounds of Camberwell. And I don’t know if anyone else was up and about last night but there was the most amazing moon last night.

When we lived in Japan the woman opposite played the shamisen.For those of you lucky enough never to have heard this instrument it is a bit like a twangy ukulele. Im sure if played to a very high standard and in a room very far away it is perfectly wonderful but at 6am opposite your bedroom window it is not in the least amusing. To the point that I’m afraid we called the noise people round. Being very Japanese ( ie doing things absolutely by the book) they arrived  in starched overalls, with clip boards, recording equipment and ladders. They instructed our neighbour to play again and again, first quietly, then medium, then loud and once more and over again while they all muttered and bowed and wrote notes after walking up and down the road while she practised away and we banged nails into our heads. After hours of this torture they came to the conclusion that yes, it was rather annoying and from then on they said she could only play for half an hour. Between 6am – 6.30am. You can imagine.

Our house is old and creaky and seems to shift and sigh in the middle of the night after years of door slamming and thundering up and down the stairs by a generation of  children and friends. When they were teenagers and out getting up to goodness knows what I would fall asleep with half an ear open for their safe return. The jangle of keys at the front steps and the thunk of the bathroom light being pulled on meant that they had survived the night.And the times when it sounded like a herd of elephants had arrived home with the smell of tobacco wafting up to my attic to the thud of music and laughter.

And now they have all grown and the house is quiet I rather miss all that noise