The Blackbirds Sing

One Monday Morning in June

It is 4:15 a.m. and the Blackbirds are singing beautifully. They will stop soon as they've been going for 10-15 minutes and it is now getting light. It is strange how they Blackbirds always start first when it is still dark but then on the point of getting light there is a period of silence until they all start up in the Dawn Chorus.

I had a call at 10 o'clock last night from Libby next door. She had been calling me from her kitchen but I hadn't heard because I had the TV on. She asked me to go out the back and I found her at her bedroom window with a basket on a piece of string, which she let down for me to grab. It had a big dish of strawberries inside. I removed the dish and sent the basket back up. During this carry on my new neighbours above me slammed their bedroom window loudly. They go to bed early so I suppose having me and Libby chatting and laughing outside annoyed them!

They moved in a few months back and are in their middle 20's or thereabouts and have a little girl about two years old. The wife doesn't seem too bad, but the husband is a surly bloke. He locked me out on Saturday night! I'd left at 4:30 p.m. to go into Woolwich, where I met Meg and went back to her house with her shopping in my trolley and had some supper with her, getting back here about 10:30 only to find the catch on the front (door locked). I had to ring the upstairs door bell and get him to come down to let me in. He wasn't very happy about it. As I usually don't get in until nearly 11 o'clock and sometimes even later, it is going to be very awkward if he starts putting the catch on like that. As the main front door is a communal door serving both our flats he shouldn't really do that; and I am certainly not going to be put under a curfew just because he wants to go to bed early and is worried about burglars. I just find it hard to understand all this mania for locked doors and windows.

On Thursday we had our first annual meeting or our Neighbourhood Watch where the general talk was concentrated on locking doors and windows but it was interesting to note (to me anyway) that all the burglaries in our area during the last year were at houses where the doors and windows were locked!!

It seems to me only logical that if you make something secure it is sending out the message that you have something of value to protect and that the house is empty. When Alan picked me up the other week he said "Aren't you going to shut the back door?" It was propped open with a chair. I told him I would put the light on and turn the radio up so it would be quite safe as any passing burglar would think there must be somebody about as only an idiot would go out and leave it like that. I suppose there is no comment to that really!

I had a lovely Sunday. Watched two Beatles films and Star Trek!!! so it was a real nostalgic trip down memory lane. I always liked the Beatles music, but in the 60's thought of them as young lads; yet Paul is 50 years old this Thursday, which is only 9 years younger than me. It is strange how your view of different age groups change as you through life. I remember clearly thinking my sister-in-law was 'old' at 38 when I 18 years. Now 38 seems 'young'.

Well, as it is now daylight and the 5 a.m. news is on, I think I will finish off here and get a couple of hours sleep before it gets hot.

Grace Russ - June 1992