Sound of Sundays

On Northolme Road a couple are shaking out a blanket on the pavement. Sunday morning and it's pretty quiet on these streets. The traffic on the main streets is a low rumble, out of sight. Most people are indoors waiting for the spring. I'm walking along peering through bay windows into front rooms. Rows of books on shelves, tall exotic plants by the window, the flicker of TV images and the back of someone's head appearing above an old brown chair, a brass clock on top of the fire place. The sound of a piano.

I'm thinking about something Steve said last night, when he and David came round mine for our guitar session. He said he liked the sound of the milk bottles as he put them out at night. It's a homely sound. Do you remember that advert in the early eighties, with Brian Glover saying: 'don't let your milkman become a thing of the past'? I'd almost forgotten about the milkman; the places I've lived over the past 18 years don't get milk delivered to.

I like the whirring sound of the electric milkfloat heading up your street in the morning before the sun rises. Or when you're laying in bed late on a weekday morning and the sounds of the street outside have stopped as everyone is now in work or school and all you can hear is the spin of the washing machine . When you're a child, Sunday afternoons always used to be still; the men would be asleep in their chairs and the women could be heard in the distance, talking quietly in the kitchen. But all you could really hear would be the sound of the clock above the fire place as you push a toy car across the carpet and try and imagine a scenario to play out as you stare into the pattern of the carpet.

A woman walks across the street with her washing bunched up in her arms. I'm walking past the houses with their front porches with green mats, brown mats, steps with green algae, the green recycling bins full of old newspapers and magazines. In just over a month's time I will be 40 years old. I head home for a cup of tea and hot cross buns.