My son had friends round last night; they had been to the pub with my husband and daughter, and when they came home I was delighted to see the boys, nice lads, with big lads booming voices, loud and cheerful. After an hour or so with them I had to retire to do some last writing, and husband to bed to read, and daughter to her bed to watch TV, leaving the boys in the early hours of the morning, downstairs, chatting and laughing.
Goodness knows what time they went home and my son went to bed; I heard lots of loud voices, at one point they went outside and there was lots of giggling, then they may have gone to the beach because I heard their voices going down the road.
This is a lovely sonnet about the night by John Masefield; his is a very quiet house he is describing, so quiet he can hear the mice in the wainscot. He creeps downstairs and quietly opens the door… but his poem is about something more creepy and spooky than several very large cheerful lads larking about in the dark!
Night came again, but now I could not sleep.
The owls were watching in the yew, the mice
Gnawed at the wainscot; the mid dark was deep,
The death-watch knocked the dead man’s summons thrice.
The cats upon the pointed housetops peered
About the chimneys, with lit eyes which saw
Things in the darkness, moving, which they feared.
The midnight filled the quiet house with awe.
So, creeping down the stair, I drew the bolt
And passed into the darkness, and I knew
That Beauty was brought near by my revolt.
Beauty was in the moonlight, in the dew,
But more within myself whose venturous tread
Walked the dark house where death ticks called the dead.
Lois Elsden 