Sunday morning... Time once again to step over the casualties of last nights binges and make my way to where I sit now, typing out this blog entry. What struck me was how quiet everything was. A solitary electric tool echoed in the back streets on the west side of Swindon hill, whining away with it's owners delirious need to reduce his untidy house to matchwood. Oh sure the church bells were trying to keep christians occupied on their day off but for some odd reason it didn't seem as intrusive a background noise as it often is. Hordes of sikhs swarm in from every direction to attend their rituals at our local temple. Unlike the noisy english, they hardly make a sound, almost as if they're trying not to attract attention to themselves. Hard not to notice really, given their numbers, colourful ethnic garb, and the impossible task of threading my way through the crowd. It's too nice a morning to get annoyed.

Then I noticed the sky. Utterly cloudless, an expanse of blue you'd expect to see in the deserts of Africa albeit with a slightly grey haze on the horizon. Not a single contrail. No white specks shuttling to and fro across the Atlantic. Just a sense of peace and calm you don't really encounter very much in the hurly-burly of the modern world. So my learned advice is that if you want peace and quiet set off a volcano.

Cats

The funny thing is that our feline friends and neighbours seem to sense today is going to be quiet on a pastoral level so rarely enjoyed in their everyday struggle for survival and strokes from strangers. There's the same white cat in his usual place on the window sill of a house down the road, cleaning himself, totally uninterested in the comings and goings he normally studies. One cat rolls lazily around on the tarmac, safe in the knowledge that holidaygoers are trapped where they are and thus the risk of being mown down by drivers driven to psychopathic rage by their kids incessant demands for global positioning equipment will not occur. That was probably the only cat moving in Swindon just now.

Noise Update

Just heard a train passing through Swindon heading west to Bristol. There it goes, a warbling diesel pulling a long line of gravel hoppers. The smoother swish of a passenger train comes the other way. Not to be outdone, the man in the next house has started a strimmer and relaxes in the high pitched snarl. By tonight, the void in background noise will no doubt be filled by the sound of social mayhem and unrestrained music. Why do human beings demand peace and quiet all the time? All we do is fill it with noise.