Perchance to dream

The endless rain and dull grey skies are making me tired. So very tired.

It might, of course, be partly due to the fact that I was still awake at 0400 this morning, seriously wondering if I ought to get up and do something constructive. I'm not sure what that "something" would have been, mind.

Ironing would have been noisy and steamy, thus disturbing to Mr WithaY, who was fast asleep. He is not a fan of noisy, steamy activities at 0400 unless he is an intrinsic part of them, and we are on holiday in a posh hotel, after an evening of fine wine and delicious food.

I could have read some work stuff, but I dismissed that idea as "too bloody dull." I could have read a book, but I couldn't be arsed to get up and find one that I wanted to read.

Baking a cake (despite my recent whinging about my fat arse) would have meant making delicious smells* through the house, also likely to wake up Mr WithaY. I suspect that even the most delicious of cherry madeira cakes would be insufficient to pacify him if I woke him in the wee small hours by baking one.

So, I lay there for a bit, then, too tired to get up and be useful, too awake to sleep, till I eventually dozed off. Then I had a great lucid dream episode, which was entertaining. No idea what it was all about now, but it was one of those dreams where you can control the action to some extent. I love those. You know you're asleep, but you also have enough of your brain still awake to be a film director in your head. Sometimes I dream that I have woken up, though, which is bizarre. Then when I really wake up, I am all confused.

My sisters used to sleepwalk when they were younger, possibly they still do. We all talked in our sleep, which I certainly still do. More unnervingly, I also laugh in my sleep. I once seriously freaked out my room-mate at college by laughing for over an hour whilst fast asleep. She said she just sat up in bed, wide-eyed and trembling, watching me in horror, expecting my head to rotate 360 degrees, or my entire body to levitate.

She once had to stop me climbing out of the window, having watched me open it and throw my boots into the garden. Again, no idea what caused that. I lost my alarm clock. She told me a few days later "You put it under your mattress, that night you threw your boots into the garden." Ah yes, of course I did...yes, here it is, safe and sound. Poor Clare. What a lot she had to put up with. No wonder she never kept in touch**.

Mr WithaY (and assorted mates who have had to put me up over the years) say that I have also woken them in the dead of night by screaming in my sleep. How nice for them! When they wake me up, terrified and distressed, I have no recollection of it, or indeed what made it happen. Not weird at all then. The perfect guest.

Speaking of which, time to go and prepare things for dinner. We have some mates coming round. Marvellous.




*Oddly, we both hate being woken by any kind of smell. Although a delicious one might be a nice change.

**To be fair, neither did I.

Water on glass

Today it has been All About Rain. I see that the Met Office are revising their initial summer weather forecast from "Phew, what a scorcher" to "Fuck me, it's wet."

I was at home all day, and after a late night last night I slept ridiculously late this morning. I thought I'd have got home by 10.30 last night, but I hadn't taken into account the fact that the later trains do Different Stuff to the usual commuter trains I catch.

For example, the 8.20 from Waterloo stops at Salisbury, but instead of the FRONT three coaches carrying on down to Exeter, the BACK three do.

However, the announcements that they make as the train is sitting in Waterloo are a complete lie. They tell you that the front three coaches will continue after Salisbury, which is what the earlier trains do.

So, if you are a lady with many, many heavy bags, and a reserved seat in the BACK three coaches, and you move to the front after hearing that announcement, you would be mightily pissed off if after a couple of stops they then said that the BACK three coaches were going to continue after Salisbury.

She had to pick up all her many, many bags and drag them all the way back through the train, grumbling profusely. Can't say I blamed her.

Anyhoo, the point of this is that it takes much longer for them to sort the train out in Salisbury, so you sit there for bloody ages* till they finally decide that all is well and they can continue on their merry way.

In the end I was home by 11, but Mr WithaY was still up, watching TV and keen to hear how my exciting cosmopolitan evening in London had been. He is planning Great Things for the Virtual Village Fete, so I suspect this weekend we might have a flurry of creativity in the WithaY household.




*About 15 minutes