morning, with parakeet

and with plenty of condensation on the window, because it was very cold outside.  Indeed, I was woken with a start at around 5.58 by a weird sound - somewhere between a dragon and a blow-torch - so strange that I spent a minute or two listening to my breathing in case it had turned heavy and labored and I'd dreamed it into dragon breath, but after I looked out of the window, I could see that it was the neighbor scraping frost off his windshield.  Then the rattling noise began - like a woodpecker using an amplifier.  That was the parakeet, who I strongly suspect was mimicking a woodpecker.  At that point I gave up and got up, for a day of various kinds of frustrations around house stuff, and the inability of buses to move through traffic caused by the Tube strike...