I lay half awake at various points through the night, listening to the noise upstairs. The 3am brain transforms the muffled voices, the scrapes and bangs of furniture and footsteps, into something more menacing. The waking nightmare has always been the same. Someone outside wants to get in. I wake fully before my alarm. Do I have time to fall back asleep? I’d have to get up to find out. The fog is thick as yoghurt. The sun rises like a golden disc. It is cold, I am tired. The ground is frozen again. The skeletal forms of trees, still waiting for spring, reach out of the gloom. The frost is so hard in parts I can readily imagine it as snow. The fog melts away. A powder blue sky promises a good day. I can’t wait to spend it indoors.

I received an email from the Student Loans Company advising I’m eligible for a refund. Nothing looks more like a scam than an email from a government body. I click no links but go online and check my account. There is an option for a refund but there are no details. The bank account associated with my loan is my student account, which has been closed for years. I’ve no idea the details, and despite having cleared all the internet security hurdles, I apparently can’t update my own bank details without reading them out to a person. Still feels like a scam, so I phone them to be sure. When I spell out my name to the man on the other side, he has the confidence to tell me he thought I had spelled Christ. Not quite, and an unexpected change from the usual issues with my grunt of a surname. It turns out I’m not being scammed, if you ignore the student loan itself which is by all accounts one of the biggest scams I’m likely to get caught up in. They have taken too much money from me, not just this year but in 6 of the last 12. Weird then, that they’ve never thought to let me know before. I update my bank details, submit my refund request, and await a healthy cash injection from His Majesty’s government.

Rachael falls asleep to the Guardian crossword. This apparently will work anywhere, on the sofa, in bed, on a train. I don’t know that I’ve ever got off a train at Liverpool Street before. I find I’m somewhat awed in the city by the big glass and concrete cliffs. The Premier Inn hub is a poorly laid out room. Not being able to walk all the way around the “double” bed in a hotel should be illegal. The glass walled bathroom is more of a shock. Particularly the top third which isn’t frosted. Rachael and I are lucky, we’re both short enough to give one another some actual privacy. We meet Mike and Maria in the reception, and Mike leads us off to Needo, which he informs us is a “Brick Lane institution”. His selected starter of lamb chops blows me away. How good have you imagined lamb to be? This was sensational. The biryani as well. Almost everything with lamb, and it’s all good. Delicious. Possibly the best I’ve ever had. It’s a shame to see some of it go back to the kitchen.

We set off down Commercial Road to the Troxy. A music venue I’ve never been too before. It’s classically beautiful inside, like any of the good old theatres and cinemas of London given a new lease of life in the live music scene. Rachael and Maria take photos of the ornate light fitting in the middle of the ceiling. Surprisingly, it’s also cold. I have never kept a coat on for an entire indoor gig before. Two security guards make a mess of the toilet queue. Pointing, gesturing, suggesting you don’t need to queue but what else are we supposed to do when faced with a line of people? Goat Girl open. I think the band are alright, I liked the bit where the drummer started screaming. I’m the only one of us who does, the rest are less impressed. No beers are on at the bar, which turns the thing into a joke beyond the price. Los Campesinos treated us to their new album, All Hell, in full and then a second set of old school bangers and classics. Hung Empty gets me singing. Then Hello Sadness too. I’m still a middle album fan, so some of the older stuff passes me by but I recognise it. Rachael’s bopping a bit. She might be having fun. I’m swaying most of the time. It’s my second full gig with ear plugs in. I only remove them to experience the full force of You, Me, Dancing. After, we go to the pub. Through the window we watch route spin on the side of a bus. Where is it going? Sorry Not in Service. A chorus of boos. We were quickly ushered out on to the street not long after entering. I’m ready for bed. The rest of the gang heads to the hotel bar for another.

I turn right at Donnington Bridge. I so rarely do this. Through the park, over the bridge. I warn a man on the narrow path ahead I’m coming, he asks me how far I’ve run. “Not far enough.”  “I wish I could keep up with you,” he says. I give him a thumbs up and I’m gone. Through the houses of Hinksey village. What I mistake for a family is a group of youths out for a walk. I cross the A34 and try not to hack up a lung. I wasn’t 100% when I left home, I’m not sure what I am now. I keep running up to the golf club car park. That’s a fair hill to have come up non-stop. Maybe I’m fine. The view of the city from here is one of the better ones. Foggy today, spires asleep. In the nature reserve it looks like nan and grandad are taking the grandchildren for a walk. They part to let me pass. The board walks are pretty loose where they’ve not been replaced and I’m not sure I trust them. The mud is worse but at least there’s no fear of snapping through, only sliding over. The dog walkers have no idea I’m coming despite the clanging of the boards beneath me. I stop behind them as there’s nowhere to really pass and even now breathing heavily right on their backs, they remain oblivious. I’ll have to spook ’em. Once I’m away I’m free, through the mud, across the planks. This is what it’s all about. I waved at a man on the hill top coming the other way. Windy up here. A kite glides along the woods edge. The hard work is over. Down hill from here. In Happy Valley I pass the youths again. They’ve just come up the bog. I slow to walk through the thick mud. I go back over the railway line. A woman accelerates upstairs. Impressive. I’m tired now, been tiring a while now. Back to the river. Back to the lane. And done. The first big one in a while, one I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

The bus out through Summertown holds flashes of nostalgia. How long ago did Mark live up this way? A decade maybe? I barely remember. The top deck gives us views over fences into silly sized houses. We start with a coffee at the Woodstock Coffee Shop. They’re out of the good looking cinnamon buns we’d seen on the internet so we settle for just a drink. There are several don’t feed the duck signs up, but I can’t see any ducks. Steph and Jake join us. We go to the Oxfordshire Museum, which opens up on to a courtyard. A soldier’s museum is beyond, but our destination is the gallery, containing the commended and winning entries of the Bird Photographer of the Year competition. Some quality entrants. A diving bird looks like a hippo. A kestrel about to catch a butterfly. A gull over the ice of Jökulsárlón in Iceland. A view up a tree with a nuthatch’s perspective. I read every description. It’s quiet enough to take it all in. The four of us then traipse over to Blenheim for a walk around the lake. Buzzards, kites, a juvenile heron. I also add a grebe and a big egret to my still very short life list. Jake and Steph head off, Rachael and I grab a baguette that we have to defend from the ducks. They are big fat bread fed ducks. Here they are. The signs are everywhere but not in the square, where children are feeding them.