Weird weekend

I'm pretty sure it was something to do with the fact that I was worrying about collecting my parents' cat from the cattery first thing on Saturday morning, but I had the most extraordinary dream on Friday night. I was chatting with my mum and a few friends somewhere, it was mid-afternoon sometime, and then I suddenly remember that I had just had a baby, and that I had left it locked in a car, in its car seat, for the past six hours. Weirdly precise, as ever. So I rushed with my mum to the car, and found the baby absolutely screaming its head off, unsurprisingly, and I felt this absolute horror that I had missed this most formative of times with it. And I remembered from somewhere that skin-on-skin contact was especially vital, so I was frantically trying to strip off my dress and lay the baby on my chest. Then I woke up.

On Sunday morning, after another rubbish night's sleep, I got up at 5.45am to collect my parents from Heathrow. I had been flashed by a speeding camera for the first time in my life on Saturday (livid), and I knew I had plenty of time to make it to the airport, so I drove at or under the speed limit for the entire journey, and averaged 40mph on the motorway. It was quite a notable experience. Fun to annoy people, and be overtaken by huge lumbering trucks. But what I noticed most of all was that my concentration hit rock bottom. Travelling so slowly meant that I felt like I was in a tractor or similar, pottering along in an aimless, unhurried fashion. And instead of this making me feel more in control, I got so bored that I found myself staring out of the side window at the rising sun, drifting off into reveries and, frankly, not focussing. It was categorically far, far more dangerous than if I had been doing my customary high-speed cruising. I'm not suggesting that hitting a child at 90mph would be preferable to hitting it at 40. I'm just saying that I felt hilariously hypnotised by the slowness.

Normally when I pick up my parents, I meet them in the Departures drop-off point so that I a) don't have to get out of the car and b) don't have to spend money on the short-term car park. But an officious Heathrow employee moved me on so many times out of the drop-off zone that I gave up and pulled into the car park. This - combined with the fact that my parents must have deliberately ensured that their luggage was the last out of the plane, almost certainly because they were their usual three days early for the flight and it fell foul of the first on, last off disaster - meant that I had about 30 minutes to watch the people coming out of Arrivals. There were banners and whoops and squeals and tears, it was all very emotional. I did love the contrast I saw between one girl, who emerged through the doors and yelled 'Mum!', dropped her bags on the floor and ran about 50 yards to embrace her mother in loud hugs and affectionate gasps, leaving her boyfriend to pick up her luggage and struggle over to the reunion on his own - and the man who sauntered very quietly up to another guy standing next to me, and said oh-so-casually, 'Have you got the time, mate?' - that was the extent of his understated greeting to his friend, who turned, smiled and said, 'Alright, mate?' and the two of them shook hands and walked off. Both lovely, in their way.

And now it's Monday and the working day, at least, is nearly over. I'm afraid the black dog descended this morning, but I made it out of bed and into the office, and forced myself to the gym for a hit of endorphins. It wasn't quite enough to drag me back to normal but I'm definitely feeling better than I was. Far too much time spent alone and in bed over the past ten days. The sockets where the teeth went are still hurting, but much less so - the lack of sensation in my chin and lower lip is perturbing but apparently it can take weeks to come back. Really hope it does, would be sad to think I'd had my last two-lipped kiss. But hey, it was a nice one, so a least that's something.