Sadly I am still slightly insane with sleep deprivation today, but more of that later.
For now, I would like to discuss an incident that occurred last eve. I had planned to go to dinner with Astrid, my friend from choir. We were going to have a long-overdue catch-up and rehearse the music that we will be singing at an engagement party on Saturday night. Helpfully, Astrid emailed me details of her address in advance of my departure from home, to assist me in finding her abode within Greater London’s labyrinthine sprawl. As I chatted to my mum before I left home, I went online and carefully transcribed Astrid’s address onto a small piece of scrap paper. Five or ten minutes later, as I was driving across Hammersmith Bridge, I knew with a rare level of certainty that I had left the scrap of paper on the sofa.
This is unlike me – but not unprecedented. What was really quite unfortunate was the realisation that came to me instantly following the scrap of paper realisation: that I had also left my mobile phone on my bed.
I was pretty sure that I could remember Astrid’s address as Flat 11, building number 5. I knew the street name. Fine, I thought. But on arrival at her road, building 5 only had eight flats. I was stumped. I didn’t know Astrid’s phone number. The only course of action was to walk to a payphone, call my mother and ask her to read the details down the phone: one of those not-so-rare times that living with parents is unbelievably handy.
I confidently trotted down Notting Hill Gate towards the distant payphone, trying to remember when I’d last used one and reflecting nostalgically upon boarding school weekends spent sitting queuing in a badly-decorated corridor to phone some spotty and doubtless unworthy toff at another school in another county. Last night, the phonebox was largely as I remembered them to be, but the phone itself was rather more high-tech, offering facilities to send emails, texts, and pay for calls by card or coin. Allegedly. The coin slot was jammed and the card slot didn’t register the insertion of either of my offerings. Sighing, I pushed open the door and went into the adjacent booth – but the myriad red and black wires issuing from the handset were a fairly clear indication that something was perhaps awry, and sure enough, using both hands to lift the collection of black plastic fragments to my ear, a dialling tone was nowhere to be heard.Now things were looking tricky. I considered hailing a passer-by and offering them a pound to use their phone. As a last resort prior to this potentially awkward solution, I went back into the first phone box and tried to fix the blocked coin slot but quickly realised this was a no go. Dejected, I left the cubicle and surveyed my options – when, like the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, Astrid appeared. I’ll admit that there are a few factual difficulties with that simile but let’s run with it.
On a bustling London street, in the dark, while carrying the evening meal and a new pair of glittery gold shoes, and walking at high speed as she was five minutes late having stopped en route to buy the shoes, it was unlikely in the extreme that Astrid should have spotted me. Her look of astonishment and confusion on seeing me emerge from a phone booth was a fitting image to accompany the terrific speed of recent developments in modern technology but she managed to understand my desperate gabbling and guided me towards her wonderful flat (number 11, building 15, pesky forgotten 1…) for an evening of music and joy (but not joyous music. We need some more practice). Nineteen hours later, I still think her serendipitous appearance is worth noting. I can be forgetful and stupid, but out of the darkness, light can shine. Sometimes.
And now, as pledged previously in this bumper entry, onto my insomnia. Actually, I don’t want to talk much about the insomnia itself, as other people’s sleeplessness rates up there with other people’s dreams and other people’s pets as topics that should be filtered out well before they are uttered aloud. What I wanted to talk about was my method for conquering said sleeplessness. Based on the childhood game, ‘I went on holiday and I took…’, each night as I toss and turn, I set myself a new list to compile and start off, adding one alphabetical item each time until I doze off, usually somewhere around the LMNOP area. Previous hot topics have included Seventies popstars (ABBA, Bowie, Cat Stevens, Donovan etc.), films with one word titles (Arachnophobia, Babe, Casino, Dogma…) and single word bands or solo singers (Dubstar, Eminem, Feeder, Goldfrapp).The trickier the category, the longer I tend to spend thinking of each letter and the more likely I am to get back to the beginning and find I’ve forgotten the ones I’ve already done. Last night, to make things move along at a brisk pace, I chose a new category: random nouns. My self-imposed rule was, I had to accept the first noun I thought of – and this is where it got a little peculiar. As I recall it, my list was as follows: abacus, blister, cats, dogs, elephants, Fargo, guillotine, hostel, igloo, jester, kola kubes, locket, marmalade, nipple, oasis, perspex, Ramadan, sari, Taiwan, ukulele, velvet… and there I drifted off. I don’t know what this says about the inner workings of my brain, but I’m sure there’s a message in there somewhere. All suggestions welcome.
And although I have even more to say – including the repellent breath of the guy I had to have a meeting with this morning and the unbelievably swanky offices at Bloomberg – I think that is enough for today. Over and out.
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