Windy

I like it now with the wind blowing through the house, through open doors and windows, slamming them shut before someone has time to close it. I couldn’t sleep in the heat. The heat which gets all the more trapped in red brick houses, felt like being in a stone oven. I tried to sleep naked on the cold wooden floor, but the floorboards just heated up from my body temperature. I opened the door to the back garden and drowsed on the white pleather sofa, but a mosquito came screeching in my ear, so I slapped my head and went back to bed.

 

Today the wind is whipping everything about. Watching out of the garden door as the red tree on the left-hand side meets branches with the tall bamboo grasses on the right-hand side. Swaying like they’re drunk and shaking their leaves off. I had to prop up the tomato plants, which have shot up and tried to grow too many fruits. The ambition of all of Annina’s tomato plants she left in our care is hard to contend with, but I’ll do my best to help them along. I pruned their boisterous bottom branches and used twine to hold their necks up on sticks. I had to pull three snails off our flowerpots – both impressed and grossed out by their sucker-strength.

 

We have gained a new housemate and a spider recently. The spider (whom I have named Serafina) hovers above the kitchen stairwell and has her web in the window, which is finely constructed and equally distributed across the pane. She sits in the middle of it waiting for prey, but every time I’ve passed her abode, I’ve not seen any flies or insects caught in her net, but on my side of the house at the top of the stairs there are loads of midges. I wonder if she’s made a fool’s choice building it out there, but we shall see.

 

I open the double-doors to my bedroom (purpose built to be a sitting room) and the wind rushes past, scattering papers across my desk. It’s so breezy and blustery in here, like being on the prow of a ship – a Post-it stuck to my ugly work monitor flapping like a sail. I unfurl my sleeping-bag onto the floor and lie down, listening to the whooshes of the wind outside.

 

There is an enormous bush outside my bedroom window, which is very noisy – for a bush. A flutter of sparrows descend onto it every day and chirrup for ages, like a full theatre audience chattering loudly amongst themselves. At night, usually after midnight a family of foxes eat take-away under the bush, ripping open treated cardboard and crunching through discarded chicken bones, falafels and chips. Occasionally a group of people hang out in front of the bush, between 2-3am with drinks. I overhear everything they’re saying, as if we were in conversation because they don’t realise that the bush they’re cotching in front of is actually hiding my open bedroom window. I’ve heard of scandals about stolen money and loved ones who’ve moved away. It’s sad come to think of it and lying awake I’ve wished that I were dreaming and not hearing the real life tales of strangers in a bind.

 

The gusts of wind continue to rock my boat/sleeping-bag, gently from side to side, drifting me off to sleep.

Heatwave and more fish

I had thought about buying another bowl for the boat. At the moment we can’t both eat soup at the same time, nor anything else that requires a bowl, for that matter. I had thought about buying another bowl for the boat but I had thought about many things since walking aimlessly around this store because the heat had made me go insane. I gladly stood still in the milk and cheese aisle for 10 minutes considering my options about a bowl and then bought a cucumber and left.

Heat brings it out of people. Crying (a woman outside the Tube station, into her hands with a friend stooped low to help), fighting (beefcake boys on bikes skidding and smacking), cavorting, frolicking, rollicking, shouting with jubilation at passers-by because they’re happy or sad or mad. It’s a bad rad heat that’s struck London this week. Tubes like slums, pubs like slums, everywhere like slums, with temporary shacks along the pavement springing up comprised of pimms-in-a-can or slimline-gin-and-tonic-in-a-can or something else that clatters. I bought a can of coconut juice which instantly became tepid when I left the coolness of the newsagents. 

‘Excuse me!’

I don’t hear a thing because I’m miles away sitting on my boat rooftop, my thoughts are like smudges.

‘Excuse me! Hey there miss!’

Oh it’s a child. On a bike. With a friend. What does he want… ‘Yeah?’

‘Do you know where you can buy fishing stuff around here?’

‘Not really.’ I go back to my staring out across water at nothing. But they’re still there waiting expectantly on their tiny bikes. I have no clue how old they are but I don’t think they could mug me because their bikes are so small.

‘I thought because you live on a boat you’d know where to buy the stuff.’

He said “stuff” with this inflection that made it sound like drugs and I’m no dealer, of fishing stuff or any stuff. ‘What sort of stuff?’ I calmly ask because it’s just so very hot.

‘Fishing stuff.’

I feel like we’re going in circles. Then the other one perks up, he’s on the small red bike.

‘Oi, do you reckon there’s fish in here bruv?’

‘Yeah I reckon so.’

‘I saw a massive carp get caught the other day, so sure there’s fish in the canal.’ I’d apparently decided to be part of their conversation.

‘So you do fish!’

‘No. A man was fishing.’

‘Where’s this man then?’

‘I don’t know.’ I stayed still and quiet but they still noticed me and looked in my direction expectantly so I shrugged and pointed and said: ‘He went that way’. 

And with that they left. 

I heard a crash of breaking glass hitting pavement, a roar of applause and some ensuing argument or other dissipating from the pub in the opposite direction to where the two boys headed. They hadn’t caused the commotion but the sounds of laughter and braying of men and women wafted over the river for eternity in this heat. I bet they’re cycling extravagantly towards Mile End.