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It is the day after the Bank Holiday weekend and it is  the quietest day for ages. There is no pattering rain, almost no  holiday D.I Y-ing, banging, drilling across the back garden fences. My email has not pinged for over an hour. The builders in the neighbourhood must be taking a longer weekend. At the weekend, anyone who, firelighters  and sausages at the ready  was poised, appear to have gone back to work. It feels like I have the neighbourhood to myself- apart from my neighbour upstairs who is always there, and the  buddhist chanter next door who is not chanting …… yet. I was meant to be going to the post office, but I am glued to the silence. It is hypnotic, especially in the urban landscape that I call  home.

I can still  hear the  occasional siren wafting over the breeze from the Holloway Road about half a mile away, and I can still feel the rumble of the buses passing my house, as they do, every 10 minutes ( ha ha ha -well that is what it says on the timetable). But….

the birds are not singing and there are no swifts screaming in the sky. I never noticed when they left. I never do until it is too late. They do it every year. Just disappear back to where ever they came  from 3 months earlier. The sound is gone and the marker is left. YOUR SUMMER IS OVER SUCKERS!  I had a  poignant day yesterday. The wind changed and somewhere I felt that ‘back to school’ feeling in the air. A little panic came over me, a need for my mum, a freshly laundered hanky, a motherly hug and clean satchel. I cried over something very insignificant in a lost type of way and panicked about the passing of time.

SO I HAD BETTER CARRY ON SINGING.

SONG OF THE DAY – Walking on Sunshine ( Floating on Cloud 9)


I spent all day singing this song which has taken me months to arrange and re-arrange and I think I have finally cracked it! I sung it all  parts in one tempo and then realised it was too slow – so had the luxury of singing them all again as there were no appointments out there. This is  a demo for  my choirs, so will sound much lovelier once there is a whole group of singers singing it not just me. Make some sound ! Sing Along! We have not got for ever. x x

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It’s been a funny week, what with an old musician pal  of ours not surviving a vehicle collision, and Mr P. having some very painful dental work, stitches and teeth roots out – rather too much pain, and now sicky  dizzy antibiotics. Today, around all the work we slipped out and went down to Trevi, to get a bit of lunch. Trevi is one of my favourite little caffs, it’s a sandwich shop and Italian, which is family owned and been there for ever (40 years). It has such a great feeling as you know there are such a lot of history, tradition and elbow grease in the place. Many of their customers are like extended family. I got a great picture of Mr. P and his trifle. The look on his face was classic (as was the wearing of his ironic christmas jumper that my dad bought him last year) I think the sight of a trifle cheered him up, as earlier in the week he was in that place when you are in so much pain that he never thought he would ever enjoy a trifle or anything again. The food at Trevi  is cheap and delicious. It’s about a mile and a half of walking, mostly down one of the most polluted streets in the country  – though I have a soft spot for Holloway Road, and it does have trees. It has definitely got better over the years, that is for sure. Lots more little cafes and shops, new flats have opened around the University.

Strolled  all the way home too, and visited my favourite hardware shop which has been owned by the same brothers  who have had a shop in the Holloway road since 1973!  Ah, there is something good about roots (not the dental ones) and about watching people growing up and old around you. I moved around so much when  I  was a kid,  and around a small area of north London in my student days and my 20s, it’s nice to have been in the same place for so long, even though I spend much of the  time wishing I was somewhere else. ha ha !

SONG OF THE DAY – Spike Jones -All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth

very funny!