Couldn’t sleep. Too much restlessness. Fractured dreams, interrupted by waking moments, the storyline - such as it is in dreams, - continuing when snatched sleep returned, like some surreal foreign film, the characters appearing from different time zones spanning forty years, from past to present, their presence all too real and clear as day, some not altogether welcome, malevolent spirits out to make trouble - again.
A song also, spinning around and around like a soundtrack on repeat, playing on and on with no pause button to hand. Too hot, then too cold, this side, that side, over and over and over once more. Then cramp. Wakefulness now completed. Stretched the contracted muscle to ease the pain, cursing in whispers. Accepted defeat ungraciously. Turned on the light. 03.24. Stared at the clock unbelieving, but the hands didn’t lie. Tossed aside the duvet in a final gesture of surrender and swung my legs free of the rumpled warmth. Grabbed the dressing gown from the back of the door and took the creaking, darkened stairs to the kitchen. Closed the door behind me, flicked the light switch and filled the kettle.
Listened as the stuttering filament sparked into life and grew to a roar as the water heated up, all the while peering into the darkness beyond the window, the dull sodium glow of distant street lights through the trees the only sign of life at this witching hour. Reaching a crescendo – that really is the noisiest of kettles – the water came to the boil and I filled a mug. Cupping my hands around its warmth I creaked my way through the silence, back up the stairs to the room where the computer sits, blank screen dark, and turned it on.
The day finally sneaked up on me as I typed, beginning with birdsong, followed by the first pale signs of daylight, until next, the streetlights were out and the distant sound of tyres and passing jet planes filtered through the window glass bringing in the new morning. All night dreams retreated into the mysterious corners from whence they came and the remains of cramp lingered only as a fading ache. Outside, a heron flapped by at eye level, no more than ten feet away, coming to ground two gardens along. Or, was I day dreaming?
