EVERY Tuesday, at ten minutes to seven in the morning, I had a piano lesson.

In winter, smoke came out of people’s mouths. Shapes loomed fuzzily; first birds had not sung; lights still glowed along the street. Nan walked with me down the path, clutching her old grey coat; grains of sleep in her eyes, stockings full of ladders. Sometimes the rain fell on our umbrella, and the clothes-line was a string of pearls; sometimes we walked in a mist that hid the wood-yard. But always — through the rain, behind the mist — was the blueness (sometimes nearly black).

In spring it was different (… and escape to the sleeping garden. And so still, just the chat of birds and the air breathing quiet; then tizzies and trills and a white sky flushed with blue. It could be the Garden of Eden, but made little: no animals but Tinker — he is blind, and perhaps a mouse, and rats — for there are rats in the ivy; but mainly birds and lots of insects and pink earthworm whom I like. And daffodils yellow gone green in the hollows and jonquils milky cream, and a basin of pink that is arabis. And tassels of greenness on trees down the lane and the bamboo shoots all new), and I heard the drip-drip of the tap by the red and white geranium, tied about with grubby rag. And a quiver, just a quiver of warmth was (… and slowly the soot that is in the greenness is sucked out — plucked from the crinkles of the daffodils, the creamy petals of the jonquils; all the inkiness goes and everything comes clean. And there are green umbrellas and spears and stars all about the garden that will next month toss up daisies and bells that loop and sky-blue larkspurs) in the air, and as I went out the gate covered in lavatory-creeper the sun came up over the Queen of Angels’ — I saw it in the distance (… and last month’s dead leaves on the path).

It was a quarter to seven. There were men with kit-bags on bicycles, and at the end of Dew Street the milkman and his horse. Dog excreta blossomed from the pavement.

The brushwood fence of the house was sodden with rain. The cast-iron Scotch thistle welcomed me. I pushed open the gate.

I turned the bell I could not hear ring, and sat to wait on the seat (I wonder if she heard — for once I didn’t ring long enough, and she didn’t hear, and I got into trouble). I had almost decided to ring again, when the glass door flushed; was opened by my teacher.