The
alarm clock had stopped at half past five. Groan, what was the real
time then? I don't keep a phone by my bed as I don't want that thing
near my head, emitting its dubious waves and killing or transmuting
cells;the scientific evidence then later laid at my door if I should
suffer any age and mobile-related ailment.
And
anyway, I'm one of those who likes my 'off' time, rather more than my
'on' time. And no, I'm not talking menstruation. How crass. Typical
of a no-holds-barred feminist. No, I'm definitely not that, not
according to modern standards and campaigns, or even those of earlier
i.e. of the bra-burning or marching placards.
I
was referring to those who are really addicts who cannot bed down
without a blue light, held aloft, and so deprive themselves of sleep
and appear the next morning bug-eyed. Me, I bed down with a book, a
book book, a real physical book, and that's it.
Anyhow,
sleep had been had, that night, the night before it and the night
before that, but this morning I fished my small bedside clock out of
its resting place – the beside drawer – to read its hands as half
past five, failing to notice there was no audible tick or movement,
the former being why overnight it's consigned to a drawer, and
thought, 'No, not yet. It's far too early.' Then for some reason I
looked again and realised what you already know.
It
was two hours out. Perfect.
I'm
not, for once, exercising my sarcastic wit, for my body clock is set
to that time, or thereabouts; sometimes it takes away a half hour of
slumber.
Now,
I didn't jump out of bed as you might expect or crawl out either, I
just got up which I assume most human beings do. One leg followed
another, then before I knew it I was standing.
The
rest, as in the usual routine, occurred as it ought with no
deviations, apart from, of course, replacing the clock's battery with
another, and once again setting its hands ticking. As well as
correcting the time it kept. The tick, however, in my noiseless
bedroom seemed louder and more echo-like. Can different makes of
batteries do that? Cause a clock to have a more forceful presence?
Or, was it before run down and so diminished its output, in sound and
motion? The latter seems more logical somehow, but is time, or the
pieces that keep it, that rational? No matter. For it would most
certainly be going in the drawer. Tonight and ever after.
It
was a day, however, for clockwork. Where I couldn't like a Joan Aiken
tale say: but today is Tuesday. It wasn't; it was a day (a Thursday)
when things of this sort happen, as too are the occasional
Wednesdays.
Wednesdays
are for stationary humming refrigerated trucks, which can literally
drive me nuts. Sat there, unmoving, as the goods are unloaded,
outside my windows, and drowning out any other external sounds, like
those you might wish to hear, and interfering with internal thoughts,
which although perhaps not very interesting nevertheless need to be
thought, and need relative quiet to form.
But
Thursdays are regular – you know they're coming, the day of the
week as well as the arrival of this delivery, the sounds of which
will infiltrate for a good forty-five minutes. And I'm always in. I
somehow haven't managed to time it that I'm ever out. Or maybe I'm in
deliberately to moan. To curse 'them' aloud to my walls. And perhaps,
perversely, feel good (about myself) for suffering it...
This
truck reverses into the designated space, by the pub's kitchen back
door, with an awful squawking, like a chicken being tightly held by
the neck, and then the tinny rolling and clanking begins. The
stainless steel kegs rolled as Humpty-Dumpty might have been rolled
if he hadn't fallen, but handled roughly by beefy men in hard-wearing
gloves, and sometimes support belts like those worn by competitors
for The World's
Strongest Man.
Tough job, delivering beer, though less of a feat than that of
lifting cars or successive boulders, or pulling cabs of trucks a
measured distance.
Picture credit: Beer Tankards, 1885, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt)
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
