The Morning Chorus

I was woken this morning by the newspaper delivery guy, on his squeaky, wheezing moped, sometime around 7am. He parks it, still running, outside my house while he delivers to two houses opposite mine and then revs it up and sputters and squeaks off down to the next street and the next, where he can be heard doing the same thing repeatedly before he finally wheezes off onto the main road.

At 7.30am the guy across the street leaves for work, slamming his front door hard and getting into his car that’s parked just next to my house and starting it up with the door still open, so his 1980’s Dutch pop music blares out at volume, loud enough to wake the dead, then he slams the door and peels rubber pulling out because he has no clutch control.

At 8am, the guy two doors down, who owns pigeons and has an aviary in his back garden, gets a visitor who beeps the car horn when they turn up, drops off a usually crying child and beeps again as they leave. I can only assume the crying girl is his grandchild, and that she’s too young for Nursery.

Then starts a very loud conversation with the child as to why she’s crying and efforts to distract her. After which pigeon man’s grown up son, who has mental health issues, leaves to walk their Highland Terrier who’s named Sheila. I know this because he can be heard yelling her name every three seconds as he walks down the street talking and laughing to himself.

At 8.30am the two girls across the street are taken to school by their mother, who is constantly telling them to stay together and stop arguing. The girl’s are 5 and 7 and chatter away like starlings, sometimes shouting over each other to be heard. They can be heard most mornings saying hello to Sheila and talking to pigeon man’s very loud son.

Just before 9am, the woman across the road heads off to work. Her car door has dropped badly, so every time it’s opened and closed, it creaks and shudders and she has to bang it hard to get it to stay closed. Then it takes her three attempts to get it to start. Her grown up son’s work colleague picks him up at 9.15am, beeping his car horn three times to let him know he’s arrived while music blares out of his open car window.

At 10am, the next door (noisy) neighbour goes out to walk their French Bulldog, which gives daughter the chance to put MTV on her bedroom TV and blast out whatever pile of drivel is being shown at that time in the morning. Thankfully it goes off when Mum gets back, and they start to fight and scream at each other.

All of this happens 5-6 days a week. If we’re lucky the little old lady on the other side of us won’t be up doing her housework at 6am, playing German folk music loudly and singing along to it. She stomps up the stairs around 1am, and stomps down them again around 5.45am every day. If she is doing her housework that early, she can be heard banging her vacuum filter against her wheelie bin to clear it of dust, and then banging the wheelie bin lid down.

The Church bells are also part of the morning chorus, with a low thundering peal heard at 7am… a louder, slightly higher pitched peal at 8am, then at 8.50am, 9am, 9.50am, 10am, 10.50am, 11am and 12noon. It goes on every hour on the hour until midnight, and then you hear one strike every fifteen minutes until the 7am peal. If it’s Thursday or Sunday, you get a prolonged call to morning Mass that goes on for 67 strikes. Yes, I counted.

This morning I got up at 9.45am, leaving Bear to sleep on. I know I kept him awake snoring like a steam engine most of the night. I remember the nudges and gentle pushes to make me roll over. Time for a little pharmaceutical help with this cough and stuffy nose. I don’t have a cold as such, just a stuffy nose and a bit of a sore throat, and an occasional cough. Still, keeping Bear awake when he’s got a late shift tonight isn’t good, so I shall resort to chemical support to deal with the darn thing.

I found a cool recipe for Gypsy-Moorish Veggie Stew for tonight’s dinner. Lots of veggies and pears in a sauce made from saffron and almonds. Sounds different, so I’m going to try it. Back to Spain again after last night’s Italian. The gnocchi gratin was amazing.! The tarragon really gives a nice zing with the goat’s cheese.