Entry: The Boy Who Practices (no. 11)

From number eleven, on still evenings, comes a trumpet. It is not a good trumpet, by which I mean the boy is learning, and learning is audible, and the street has had to decide how it feels about that. I have observed the street deciding. Number eight closes a window. Number eight has always closed a window. But the Watering Man of six, I have noticed, slows his can when the trumpet starts, and the Twins pause at their gate, and a thing happens that I can only describe as the street agreeing, without a meeting, without a vote, to let the boy be bad at something in public until he is good. This is a rare behaviour. Most streets do not permit it. Field note: the value of a street is not its property prices but its tolerance for the sound of a person practising. By this measure Marlow Road is wealthy beyond its postcode.