BED

 There is a call from nature at four forty four, or thereabouts. One of those that is to be heeded or else face the misery of the consequences. This Sunday morning is barely lightening, and it has been some time now just lying in bed listening to the sound of the rain and the chirping of the birds. The light, the birds and the rain are all harbingers of a spring that can only be greeted with trepidation this year. It is too hot and too early, and it may turn into a summer that will be a disaster for many. Each of the previous several summers has been too hot, and each has been hotter than the last.

It is cool now in the dark morning, and the bedroom is silent now, the sounds were only to be heard so clearly in the open stairwell with the old single glazed windows with their handmade glass, a leftover from the past. There was also the hum of the low temperature refrigerator, the one in which the wife and the son keep their vast stores of perishable food. They do this despite all the well stocked shops and the market in close proximity to the house. It is strange keeping stores like a squirrel, but for a winter that will not come.

Go to bed again, go between the warm clean sheets for another hour. Then it will be time to get up and to make an early breakfast before taking the car and driving to Vilshofen to meet the collector.

Maybe to go to Passau, to look at the markets. 

the bells have just tolled five times.

BED