Morning
Early June in West London can be the best of times. Blue skies, a fresh breeze, the neighbourhood trees sporting thick shocks of leaves. That rattling sound is another magpie, strutting over the flat roof. I have been trying to encourage the small birds to come to my terrace, without much success so far. The pigeons come, of course, though they are too big and clumsy to get at the bird feeders, which sway in the light wind. Our famous London parakeets are more deft; they can hang upside down on the feeder, and peck out the seeds. What they spill is picked up by magpies and pigeons on the ground. The clever jackdaws come too to feed. But not the small birds, the sparrows and robins and finches, at least not so far. Perhaps they are intimidated by these others. Or maybe they are just pursuing secret purposes of their own, out of sight.
When I got up this morning I felt there was something I was supposed to do, but I had forgotten what.
Midday
At eleven o’clock I had a Zoom call with a colleague in Australia. It’s good to talk, but this form of communication is somehow irritating and boring to me; it leaves me restless. You have to step back, if you can, to remember what magic this really is: being able to speak face-to-face with someone in Sydney, nine hours away, after sunset! And you get, perhaps, a momentary glimpse of your place in the world, and of the stronghold of the dark looming up over the shoulder of the earth. And somewhere else, always, the beginnings of a new day, which could be different.
Evening
The long summer evenings here! What is it that I have forgotten today? The birds are quieter now, starting to look for somewhere to rest. Something is not quite right. Light comes aslant across the terrace. It gets in my eyes. That must be it.
How to cite: Kerr, Douglas. “Just Another Day: Douglas Kerr.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/douglas-another-day.
Douglas Kerr is a former Professor of English and Dean of Arts at Hong Kong University, and a Cha contributor. He lived in Hong Kong for some thirty-seven years, half of them in the colony and half in the Special Administrative Region. His most recent book is Orwell and Empire (OUP, 2022). He now lives in London. [All contributions by Douglas Kerr.]
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