Tales from a Sloping Bed

There are three dogs in our house tonight, all of them thrust hunkamunka into the little bedroom with the wonky floors. Only after spending the night on London and sleeping like a lamb all night long do I fully understand quite how disruptive it is to slip diagonally from top right to bottom during the sleep cycle. I insist on sleeping the windows cracked open, and the curtains drawn, to hear the birds and witness the sunrise, but this too may have just been a romantic affect. The dogs are still wary of each other. Two on my side, the other, a small and cautious little rescue terrier who is recovering from a large operation, on his. Mine follow me down to the loo in the middle of the night and wait by my side as I fill a glass of water; she barks gently as we come up the rickety stairs. I suspect it will take them a couple of days to get used to each other. I hope she will come to enjoy her sojourn in the country. I hate to say this, but on nights like this I miss Shoreditch with its hermetically sealed windows, its heavy winter weight duvet, the solid, tall bed. 

We have just said goodbye to my daughter who has been here for five days, with her lovely young man on his first visit to the UK. London became a tourist destination and with sturdy shoes and maps and bottles of water we cross-crossed the city, from the Tate Modern to St Paul's to Borough Market, from Spittlefields to Buckingham Palace to Richmond Hill. London is the place you fall in love with in the morning when it is still cold but the sun is new and people are scurrying to work filled with hope. I rather enjoyed seeing the same young man in his suit, with his coffee, in Hoxton Square each morning before work, listening to music and smiling at my dogs. I admire people who have the patience and the forethought to wait for a few minutes; it's a way of capturing time, holding it in a little glass bottle, actually experiencing the world going by instead of rushing with it. How elusive is time, how much do I wish I could slow it? My daughter is twenty two years old and she sat on my knee on the underground and it was if she were four again. What do we do with our days? What do we have to show for all the hours we have been here? How do we elicit meaning from each precious moment? Or don't we? Is that the point? That all of it feels meaningful only in retrospect?

Tomorrow night I intend to sleep on the flat earth under the stars. And dream.