… of the best nights sleeps that I have ever had. I was in bed by 22:00 and I slept right through until 06:54 with not a care in the world. I didn’t feel a thing.
Well, sort of, because I’d been on my travels during the night. And they were mega-travels too. I’d started off by telling people that I was dying (which I suppose I am, really). I’d been out down some kind of muddy track where I met someone from the Auvergne (whatever is she doing here in this kind of situation?) and she was watching me pick up empty tins, cans and bottles. I told her that I needed to have the place tidiedup before I went.
From here I went on into Wistaston, some house at the top of the “Joey the Swan” and reversing her car into a parking place outside a big house was Hilda, a woman with whom I’d worked in the 1970s (and who had subsequently died of cancer). She was coming back to work here in quite a senior situation, a good few years after she had left. I did ask if they remembered her but she gave a knowing wink. We found a file of papers belonging to one of our old colleagues. Her given birth-date was a year later than mine and she had apparently been under investigation for hiding away some money in a bank account and told no-one about it. Apparently, the papers in this file disclosed that she had originally been a male, had a sex change to a woman and then married. We asked her about it and she replied that it simply wasn’t true and that some papers must have been muddled.
My next stop was to watch an ice-hockey game. Some boys from the area were taking on another group of players, but this second group was full of high-skilled professionals and the result was a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless the better players weren’t really exerting themselves and the lesser team was playing heroically, and the score was just 4-0. In the second half, the better players had an extraordinary breakaway and one of the players scored a stunning individual goal, and this led to the sending-off of the other team’s goal-minder for allegedly kicking out at the opposing attacker. It was clear to us that he was well-beaten and making a desperate last-ditch attempt to stop the goal and in any case it was a friendly match between two teams of vastly differing expectations, but the referee remained unmoved and this totally spoilt the expectations of the crowd.
So now that I was wide-awake, I had a thirst that you could photograph and I’d rejected breakfast (and you would have done too at €7:50 a throw). I waited until about 08:30 and then went outside, because there’s a supermarket right underneath the hotel. I bought a large bottle of pop and some grapes, seeing as how they were on special offer, but breakfast was actually a carton of orange juice, two bread rolls and a pot of jam. nothing wrong with that.
After breakfast, I did some work on the laptop for a while, and then round about 10:00 I crashed right out again. I was awakened by room service but told them to clear off and I was back to sleep within minutes. I went on some really extraordinary travels during my sleep but when I awoke (at about 15:00) it all went completely out of my mind, which was a real disappointment.
I managed to stay awake for a few hours afterwards. I did a little more work on the laptop and then round about 19:00 I went in search of a pizza – I really fancied one of those. And after demolishing that, I crashed out yet again for three hours or so.
Now, it’s 01:00 and I’m wide awake. I wonder what might happen next.
