Like a voice trying to speak after a long gap in the conversation, life now trembles slightly, learning to live with its own sound which it had forgotten in the caesura. A wall of red bricks through a large, large window: daylight, and rain, and a woman on the opposite balcony, checking the laundry, holding her hands together. A new temporariness, a new room. A London estate.

Last night I still slept in my sleeping bag, like I always do in the first few days of a new house. The makeshift bed with its familiar synthetic feel is anchoring and comforting. Beginnings are always haphazard and tenuous, and all I have (the books, the olive oil, the red lentils) is still there. Time to start again.