The comforts of a rainy evening

1. Rainy autumn nights are cozy. This has to do with an obscure memory from childhood, something to do with the warm lights of Bedford and the shiny black streets outside, and dinner, and homework at the dining room table, and the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway, sounding the quarter hours and playing a tune at the half ones: which always broke the sleep of school friends sleeping over. Maybe it's that particular night when Patricia came for a sleep-over and (my mind insists) my parents were out at Camelot (though I'm almost certainly conflating two evenings) and the rain drummed on the flat roof over my bedroom and we were warm under the blankets.

2. Dreamed of 'Tokyo'- very vaguely, a sunnyish afternoon near the Ginza Maruzen or Yaesu bookstore where I did my research for A Garden in Paris back in '94- and my friend Grainne who in this settei had either produced Fullmetal Alchemist or written the manga; and we were saying in wonder 'That was so long ago! Twenty years already- no, closer to thirty!'
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