There is a bleep in my house. 

It started in the dead of night 3 weeks ago at the beginning of our lockdown. 

Our neighbour moved out and away without saying goodbye before Christmas. The place is still for sale, I think it will still be fore sale for a while.

I wonder if the bleep is lonely up there.

Perhaps it’s batteries will expire, no longer able to execute its purpose. 

Warning the non existent occupant it was sworn to protect.

Help me, I can’t perform my role.

I’m not annoyed by the Bleep. Even if it is a little erratic, sometimes a bleep.

Sometimes bleep bleep in quick succession.

I’ve tried to count the intervals, but it’s different every time. 

Cities it turns out aren’t loud places.

It’s Combustion Engines. And Modernity. 

It’s odd that now after dark, it’s just us, the silence and the bleep.

No roudy pub leavers at closing time.

No 5.55 plane that flies over on the way into heathrow in the mornings.

On our government mandated exercise we noticed how still, 

How quiet it was.

No background suhuush from the main road along the Thames. Just some birdsong and our footsteps.

The bork of a dog in the park.

We count the rainbows in the windows, as we walk.

We compete to see who can spot one first.

We wonder about our friends locked down abroad, at home, alone.

They seem ok on video calls, but still. We wonder.

Emily Dickinson has the poem ‘Silence is all we dread’

They must lie at home, alone in their cities, in their rooms.

The witching hour is elastic. Grown larger recently.

Pascal said: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

What else is there to do except sit alone and face one’s problems?

Re-thinking one’s bullshit consumption.

Re-thinking one’s bullshit job.

Re thinking all those clothes, makeup, gadgets and eating out. 

Scales are seemingly falling from peoples eyes.

13.4 billion of NHS debt written down.

And yet, we are told. The old and the vulnerable would have died soon anyway.

This is no way for a public service to editorialise.

Western states propagandise – who knew?

There’s more birds in the garden day by day.

I saw a wren today,

I spy blackbirds, sparrows, robins and starlings from our kitchen window.

The guardian who lives in the old wood yard behind us has a frenchie and a bulldog and two kittens growing at alarming rates.

My headphone adaptor broke. The replacement USBC to jack adapter I bought weeks ago in preparation for this inevitable moment doesn’t work. 

A product of bullshit consumerism, a useless piece of junk masquerading as a tool.

There’s an old man that sits on the bench in the park with his big orange bag for life at his feet. He rests his hands on his stick. 

He sits and waits in the sun.

Waits for a dog to pet as it zooms by. 

He’s there all day. Self isolating in his own way.

As this goes on my old way of life, my concerns and habits begin to fade. 

Nothing is going to be the same.

There is a bleep in my house. 

It may continue for some time.