Morning

At 06:55 this morning, the cat woke up downstairs, and finding nobody in sight, proceeded to have hysterics. She came howling up the stairs, and then sat beside the bed and wailed at me until I picked her up and calmed her. At 07:00, the clock-radio went off, not with the usual music, but with a deep male voice announcing "Le monde - et la France - attend!".

It's going to be a strange morning. I can smell it.

Afternoon

I knew today was going to be a weird one. The summer was nice and quiet, not too many strange people. But at Pearse this morning, a genuine flower-child hippy chick - she can't have been more than 17, and looked like she'd just left Woodstock - complimented me on reading Heinlein, and said he was "far out".

And at Sydney Parade, an English guy - about 40ish - got on the train with two cats on leashes. The cats sat on the seat beside him, and he told the lady sitting opposite all about them. Their names were Patches (a tortoiseshell) and Sugarcube (white).