Before Sleep that Passes too Fast

A day spent freezing under two quilts and still fully dressed. Slipping in and out of dreams I can't recall, angles of outside getting darker and colder.
Andy makes a casserole, I warm up a pizza, Em and myself watch a film.
Walk Em back to the bus stop on Portland Road. Cold night - though getting milder, and the wind not as restless as last night. Out in the Mews, under the light of the lamps swinging, there is a strange sight. Some sort of Christmas decoration, but viewed through a mild cold strikes me as amusingly sinister. Hanging from the window next door three gnomes on a rope, swinging slightly in the breeze, phantom burglars, Santa's creepy thieves.
I imagined that when I returned they may be gone; 'I swear they were there though!' but I forgot to look so don't if they are or not.
The streets between the Mews and Portland Road were empty. The burnished orange of the street light seemed darker than normal, the colour of strange autumns, hallucinatory side-effects of a considerably milder cold.
The sky seems black and deep. Portland Road is empty too, and even the mini Sainsburys is quiet.
Wave Em off on the bus, walk back through the short right-angles of the suburbia to here.
Back to work tomorrow, but there will be the always-too-quick paradise of sleep first.