The Sound of Other Days
The postman rang twice; and knocked and rapped and thumped and generally made lots of noise, so I jumped out of bed to open the door and receive a package. Why is it that he delivers at 10, 11, or 12 on a weekday but 07:35 on a Saturday?
Five minutes later the doorbell rang again. I rushed downstairs, but there was no one to be seen. No vans, no non-delivery cards, no people wandering disconsolately away down the street.
And then it occurred to me: the doorbell stopped working for a while - what if it has been storing all the soundless bell-presses and only now releasing them, like slow glass but a slow doorbell? If I can calibrate this, I can work out which rings were me when I had no keys, and if we had a pane of slow glass fitted I could look out at myself.
Gosh, I'm being a bit random this morning. And if you've done six random things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast of [blindfolds self and reaches into cupboards] chilli, matzoh flour and sandwich pickle at [types "random" into Google Maps] Random, St Neots?
Five minutes later the doorbell rang again. I rushed downstairs, but there was no one to be seen. No vans, no non-delivery cards, no people wandering disconsolately away down the street.
And then it occurred to me: the doorbell stopped working for a while - what if it has been storing all the soundless bell-presses and only now releasing them, like slow glass but a slow doorbell? If I can calibrate this, I can work out which rings were me when I had no keys, and if we had a pane of slow glass fitted I could look out at myself.
Gosh, I'm being a bit random this morning. And if you've done six random things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast of [blindfolds self and reaches into cupboards] chilli, matzoh flour and sandwich pickle at [types "random" into Google Maps] Random, St Neots?