Where does the time go? A purely rhetorical question? Into various more or less daily routines: writing in the morning while my husband plays his clavichord in the next room (a clavichord is very quiet. In Paris he has his harpsichord, but the rooms we potter in are separated by a nice, thick, bearing wall); lunch with the news; afternoon for translation, biking or going to the gym; supper and a spy novel I usually fall asleep in the middle of, which is very much a bad idea for the insomniac I am, who should not be falling asleep on the sofa. In the sleep-pursuing vein, my rbedtime outine includes 20 minutes of sitting calming (in theory) my monkey mind in the quasi-dark of our balcony/deck.

We live on the third (American) floor of an apartment building that overlooks San Francisquito Creek which is dry at least half of every year but tree-lined. The next town is on the other side of it, mostly invisible, but not sound-proof against dogs. So I sit out there and think about the different sounds: the train 2 streets away that whistles at the level-crossing every half hour on its way to San Francisco to the north or San Jose to the south, carrying university and Silicon Valley commuters; car traffic on a 6-lane highway, maybe someone out for their bedtime stroll talking to their phone. If I open my eyes, I see the lights of airplanes circling San Francisco airport, 40 minutes north, or San Jose airport, 20 minutes south. Mostly they are landing and they don’t make much noise until they are right overhead, and they are quite pretty, like the stars. Oh and the dogs: the one next door has the voice of a dog that was once part of the family, whose barking the neighbours occasionally complained about, so I still cringe when I hear it.

Beverley Bie Brahic