Restless

I have a door I can close again. I’m back in my old room. It’s temporary. Frank needed a safe landing point and I’m hardly home. He’s got the big bed while I make this room habitable once more. Needs a new carpet, needs a load of stuff ripped out, and plastering. Needs a lick of paint and some thought about the electrics. But on balance it’s a nice room in this happy flat and I’ve spent many odd years in it.

Last night I slept in the living room next to an open window, and I use the word “slept” advisedly. It was mostly swearing and rolling over. Occasionally having a vivid dream about leaving my bag in a pub in York. I had been drinking, which cuts my lucidity right down. Calm sober Al can navigate pretty well through Dreamland. Bottle of rioja Al is subject to the whim of the impossible dream haggis and his fiery minions. If I did get into a sleep state, it ended with a jump.

Frank is a revelation in the flat. He helps me hugely. He’s much better at seeing things through than I am and he’s being sheriff k sensitive to my resistance while we are trying to reverse the flow of stuff. Things are starting to move out of the flat. Some things are breaking in the process, and I’m beginning to notice that I’m not missing the things we throw.

I went with an early girlfriend to visit her father in Wales. Three out of six rooms were uninhabitable as they were full of boxes of clutter. One night we made home made pasta after he triumphantly produced a pasta roller from one of the boxes. “You see!” he announced, as if that was justification for clinging onto all that gubbins. On the drive back to Reading she was livid. “He could have so much more space…” At the time I agreed with her wholeheartedly. Now look what I’ve done.

“You should go on that programme,” my agent jokes. They find a hoarder and then put all their stuff on display in a warehouse. Sounds horrendous. No. But I’m gonna have to try a bit harder than I am. After a bad sleep last night, moving the mattress was about all we managed, and mostly I was just sad because I had had all that wine and delightfully poisoned myself.