Day 376: !

I woke up all clear-headed this morning, thinking ‘It’s 4am and I feel like this – I can do ANYTHING!’ My alarm went 15 minutes later – 7am. Not that much of a ninja, then. It was a good, deep sleep and for this I am grateful. I had meaty dreams. Figuratively, not the actual raw steak feasts I had in the first few weeks of vegetarianism in Austria.

For years after I stopped drinking alcohol, I had dreams of drinking very cold, crisp glasses of white wine. Not something I often drank or really enjoyed when I was still on the booze. I’d always feel a great chestful of dread by the end of the dream: “what have I done? It’s going to be so much work to stop again.” I haven’t had one of them for a long time.

Meaty dreams, then, which meant something this morning and were strong and clear in my mind. No longer. Just straggly remnants of a feeling. No pictures. No sounds.

Sheffield and my sister Our Face beckoned today. Beckoned so hard, I got up and went, Power Drink bouncing off my hip as I pounded to the station in time for the 9.35. As soon as the gentleman who sat opposite me from Doncaster onwards got on, I knew we’d got ourselves a talker. I was writing morning pages. He asked me if I was writing anything good. I explained what I was up to, but it was clear that I wouldn’t be up to it for long. He talked about his lottery ticket, his children, his grandchildren and the appalling app joke he made. That was me done with the writing.

He ended up talking about how much he loved Pink Floyd. I asked him what his favourite song was. He was stumped and said that wasn’t a fair question. I said ‘Fair or not, you have to answer’ at which point the gentleman sitting next to me piped up ‘See Emily Play’. We got chatting to. Turns out that in the late sixties, this man was in a band that supported Pink Floyd at the peak of their fame. However, it was in Redcar and in a bar full of (and I quote): ‘Pardon the expression, love, but it was full of serving wenches serving beer’. The Redcar audience was pissed and not up for esoteric concept album shite. They preferred rock covers.

All this went down fine with me, but The Talker’s nose seemed slightly out of joint. He rallied, though, especially when it turned out that he and I were getting off at the same stop. Once away, he fed me one Pink Floyd favourite after the other.

Good day with Our Face. She’s a talented creature and a pleasing sister. She revealed that our paternal grandfather was definitely Hungarian (and probably Jewish). That’s good to know. Both Face and I get spoken to in Polish quite regularly, as people assume we speak the language. I wish I did. I’ve played Polish characters at work and done an accent that I had to copy off Meryl Streep, who isn’t Polish either. I’m getting lost. Let’s come back.

Two big doses of dog today… one in Sheffield, Teddy, belonging to Adam who was selling the Big Issue. Teddy kept biting people today, apparently, but when me and Sarah (Face’s other name) came close, he was docile and easy. He had one brown iris and one that was half brown and half white with a little bit of blue only in the middle. Like properly white. A sweet dog. He wore the evidence of previous abuse in every cell of him, but he was sweet and gentle… with us at least.

And then Tilly, when we went for a lovely evening with Lee and Tanya. Tilly’s a sliver of a Staffie girl. She’s black and wide-eyed and very, very moreish. She has very soft armpits and very sleek fur. She’s full of energy and managed to bowl me over fully, bite my nose and face (in a clumsy young dog playful way) and make me laugh. The poor girl… we experimented with the penny whistle, some pan pipes and singing into her forehead – just gently. She seemed non-plussed by the whistle and the singing, but the pan pipes made her growl and wag and ‘sing’.

Surprising, not surprised

Thank you for a snippet of work – gratefully received and great fun to do – and for the possibility of having found a short term place to tide me over when I come back to London. I really need somewhere to live very soon after that, but it’s great that I’ll be okay when I get back. I’ll always be okay, of course, but it’s good there’s somewhere on the cards. Good news.