I lay there for some time, listening to the house settling into its Sunday quiet. At seventy, waking is no longer the abrupt shift it once was; it comes in stages, like a tide feeling its way up a beach. First the awareness of the cold in the room, then the protest of the knees, and finally the familiar heaviness in the chest—a weight not painful but simply present, like a reminder. Of what, I couldn’t say. Age, perhaps. Or the sum of all the days that came before this one.
The clock ticked with an insistence that felt louder than it should have. I imagined the long corridor outside the bedroom: the cold tiles, the slight draught that always seemed to gather near the skirting boards, the framed photographs whose colours had dulled along with the years they depicted. There was comfort in these things, even in their shabbiness. It meant continuity.
Outside, a wind was moving across the roofs, not strong, just persistent. I could picture the sky without needing to open the curtains, clouds like dirty wool pulled tightly over the town, the suggestion of rain hanging in the air, undecided. Somewhere in the distance a gull called, its voice thin and lonely, echoing the emptiness and flatness of the harbour, down the hill and across the chimney pots to the north.
I finally pushed myself upright, feeling the stiffness crack along my spine. This, too, was part of the ritual: the confirmation that the body had once again agreed to the small labour of living. I shuffled to the kitchen, where the kettle sat cold on the counter, stainless steel reflecting that same dreary morning light.
The first boil of the day always felt like an event. Not because of the coffee, though I have come to rely on it, but because it marked the moment when the house began to wake with me. The kettle’s rising groan, the faint smell of the gas radiator beginning its reluctant work, the soft clank of mugs as I set them down. These were small sounds, almost nothing, yet they stitched together the hour in a way that felt solid and reassuring.
Through the window I watched the neighbour’s garden, brown and sodden, the last of the leaves clinging to the branches like stubborn old men refusing to admit the season had moved on. A blackbird hopped across the frost-licked grass, pausing occasionally as if trying to remember what it was looking for. I need to top up the feeders.
And there I stood, hands around the warm mug, the steam rising gently into my face. Sunday mornings used to feel like pauses in a busy life; now they feel like mirrors, showing me the quiet I carry everywhere. But there was nothing bleak about it. Only a kind of clarity, a recognition that the world was still here, grey and tired and slow, yes, but here nonetheless. And so was I. Sunday morning. Now where had that cat got to?
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