The wind...

is moaning in my eaves. Today strong westerlies are blowing, I can hear them, not whispering but moaning. Oh woe they're saying, what a crap loft. I've shouted up a couple of times, told em to mind their own business, told em to keep the moaning down but they've not taken the hint.

Problem with my house is its situation. West facing, takes those winds head on, then they get in to root around, to mooch about, to moan. For me as a child moaning in the eaves conjured up images of elderly folk with chest problems (I was raised in a mining village) or little children lost. Of course I was too small to consider the absurdity of chesty pensioners or tiny kids hanging from the guttering outside my bedroom window but so what? Instead I was a romantic child who preferred an ambiance of suffering and death, in fact I distinctly recall the disappointment on learning there was a vaccine for TB. Nothing brought me greater comfort than black and white movies wherein some blond waif wasted away before our eyes. I was consumed with consumption and often wondered where I might get some. Not that I wished to die, I merely wished to be consumed for a satisfying period and bound beneath starched white sheets my thinning frame examined by an aged physician who was very wise. I can still hear the sob of a young nurse as the good doctor whispers "I'm not sure he'll make it through the night."

That line used to send me straight off.