Soul Sound

This morning I woke up, made myself some coffee while I showered, and fried scrambled eggs whilst sipping the espresso. After dressing I spent ten minutes meticulously ironing my cricket whites before folding them carefully, placing them in my bag and opening the front door to find that it was pissing down with rain.

So, cricket doesn't look likely for this afternoon.
It was one of my 'Quintessentially British Things To Do Before Leaving Britain'.

I feel like the summer of 2004 has let me down.

Yesterday there was a chill in the air so I grabbed a jacket before leaving the house, yet last night it was so stuffy that I had to open two windows before going to sleep.
Not fair.

I grabbed an 80s compilation to listen to on the way to work this morning, for reasons unknown. Despite my cleaning and tidying efforts for the impending visit of the little owl, CDs are spread all over my room on everything that can be called a surface, so it's pretty much a case of what catches my eye as I'm on my way out of the house.

I was standing under the eaves of the bus shelter across the road from my house listening to Enola Gay as a sheet of small but fast-moving drops fell just inches in front of my face when the postman loped damply down my street and made for my door.

Now. There are just two documents in the entire world that I need to complete all the paperwork for my visa application, and one of them is a report from Scotland Yard which I'm expecting to arrive any day now.

A few weeks ago now I wrote to them with the appropriate form and asked them ever-so-sweetly to provide me with a detailed run-down of the criminal record I have spectacularly failed to rack up in the last 24 years. For some reason this is taking them a long time. Maybe they feel I've gotten away with murder somewhere and are taking their time to check.

So I wandered through the rain to the house to check the post. There was nothing from the police, but peanut's Summer Burn CD had arrived, and I spent a minute or so attempting to read the track listing, which, for some reason, uses the Greek alphabet.

As I stepped out into the rain again, I could see the white of my bus through the trees as it scampered cheekily away up the hill.

Despite the fact that Scotland Yard hadn't got their fingers out (I don't want to speculate where their fingers are) Enola Gay was still bouncing along in my ears, the rain was cool and refreshing, and I had a CD of new music to listen to while waiting for the next bus.

So I was late and wet this morning, but I've still got my cricket whites, it's stopped raining, and the BBC seem to think it'll brighten up.

So I'm happy.