Parallelogram

The shock of the alarm this morning - 7:30am. The curse of a week of late shifts, you get so used to waking up at 9:30am to start work at 11:00am that when that alarm goes off for the first time at 7:30am, it comes as a nasty shock. It doesn't help that this is my Saturday morning shift at work. It means I got home last night at about 8:00pm, so a few hours awake, then to sleep, and up in the still-gloom of the morning.

I was surprised by quite how dark it was this morning. Out of the toilet window I could see a glimpse - fractured angles - of the house across the passage. Their bathroom light was on, but the yellow glow had that curious air of emptiness that lights left on in empty rooms tend to have. No sign of movement behind frosted glass, and this parellologram of muted 1970s wallpaper yellow was the colour of childhood headaches and drizzly Saturday afternoons, of November evenings and things hanging over you that you keep putting off. Around this geometry of gloomy nostalgia, there was the murkiness of the morning, a wet grey light, heavy and sludgy. Light the gas fire, put the pot on for coffee, another day down the mines, we're far from dawn here...

Except we weren't. It was just that dawn felt like 4:00am would just before Christmas in a particularly nocturnal winter.

It rained all the way to work - a walk of about three miles. I considered catching the bus as I passed by the bus stop - a bus had just pulled up - but even though it was only about 8:00am, the bus looked crowded and claustrophobic. I decided to walk, and it continued raining, and I got soaked and soggy, and it continued to feel like night in some northern town. After the first hour had passed at work, it had in fact got even darker. Looking down onto West Street, the buildings seemed to be actually generating darkness. Cars had their headlights on, and beyond it all, the sea, a grey and untrustworthy shift of water. I could almost taste the pebbles and the seafront cafes which surely must have been closed.

Afternoon now, and it's sunny, and we seem far further south than 7:30am.

post script - about five minutes after I got home this afternoon, there was a hailstorm. After the hailstorm I went to sleep - about 4:00pm - and woke up about an hour ago, disoriented in darkness. For little reason, I began to think what there was before the big bang. I got up, made a cup of tea, and, coincidentally, am now watching a documentary on BBC4 about what was before the big bang.

It doesn't make the subject any clearer though.