I was woken up in the early hours of the morning by a female voice bellowing (really bellowing, as the sound was coming from some way up the street), “It’s five o’clock in the morning!”
In that strange place between sleep and waking I wondered if Balham Council had re-introduced Town Criers and no-one had told me . If so, I reasoned, it was probably as well for them to lay off telling us the time after about 10pm. And she’d missed off the “And all’s well” bit. Unless of course, all wasn’t well. What did Town Criers do in such circumstances? “It’s five of the clock and I’ve got a bit of a headache! Do you mind if I don't ring my bell”?
But a quick glance at my alarm clock showed that it was in fact 5.22am. No Town Crier worth his salt would be 22 minutes out with the time. HeÂ’d have to hand in his bell. And as I became more awake I realised that there had been no bell and that the voice had been female (and Town Criers have to be male and fat and have big bugger-grips into the bargain). And as I became more awake I realised that this was just one of those stupid things you think when youÂ’re not quite awake. Of course that hadnÂ’t happened.
The voice then aggressively, derisively added “Every morning!”
Clearly the woman up the street had been woken by someone else. Someone who was doing something every morning at approximately 5 o clock (though more correctly approximately 5.30 in this case). But someone who was doing something that hadnÂ’t ever woken me up and so was considerably quieter than this womanÂ’s foghorn, forlorn voice.
If I’d been up to it I could have joined in the conversation (and woken up even more confused people further up the road) and shouted “Your protestation against someone else’s noise, has ironically woken up several people who didn’t hear that original sound. In future perhaps you’d like to just drop a note to the miscreant asking him or her to be quieter from now on. Of course dropping you a note is something I should have considered before joining in with the cacophony, but I was half asleep and that thought has only just struck me. Incidentally if you are going to shout out the time very loudly in the middle of the night, could you make sure you get it right, you know to the nearest half an hour at least. You don’t have to ring up the speaking clock or anything. Sorry, I should have put that in a note too. Could you just shout me your address and then we’ll say not more about it? Back to sleep everyone!”
But instead I fell back asleep.
(Incidentally the York gig went very well and there was over 200 people in. The place looked quite full! The couple who interviewed me on Wednesday, Jules and Julia, were also in. They seemed to have enjoyed the show and they were really great. So IÂ’d like to apologise for insulting them in my earlier entry. They are actually on Radio York, not Radio Leeds.)
