It was just before I woke up. She came to me just before I woke up. She entered my space, my room. I offered her a chair. I asked if she needed light. She said she’d come to me because of the ‘meat-on-meat’ piece. In my dream I knew what she meant. I asked if she’d worked with DH, sensing he’d sent her. No, she said. But she wanted to work with me. It felt good that she’d come. But then when I looked back there was no woman, no chair, just me sitting on a blanket in the semi-half-light of a standard lamp and my room was a balcony looking out on an auditorium. I took the image of her on my walk. A short, rather cross-faced woman, with close-cropped hair. I liked the essence of her, but she gave little warmth. It felt prophetic. All of it. Even the bits I can no longer recall.
It isn’t heartburn. It may be a bruised rib, or a broken one, or a torn ligament. It is sharp-edged when I inhale. I breathe deeper now into my diaphragm.
The kitchen clock keeps stopping. I’ve told you of it before. It is radio-controlled, whatever that means. It stops then starts whirring, too fast round and round. It’s done it for the last three days. Then it stops at 12.00, thinks for a bit then starts to whirr round again till it finds the correct time. It is most disconcerting. What does it augur?
There is a Christmas tree in a room in a flat behind Alexandra Hall. It’s in the living room, unlit but still decorated. Is it just idleness or a longing for Christmas past or even Christmas future? The room was lit up but empty.
I could see a figure lurching towards me from town. A slim, tall figure. I could hear a voice. Where they on the phone? No, it was a woman, very thin with spindly legs talking to herself as she reeled about. I passed her and then heard a door slam.
Alan Ayckbourn’s mother was a writer of short stories and magazine articles. The typewriter would be going all day and all night, said the presenter of the radio programme about the playwright. Apparently she bought Alan a mini typewriter so he could sit next to her bashing the keys like her.
I want a fuller life. I want to open myself to other possibilities. I want something larger, more abundant. Is it doable? And if so, what can I do from here, from now? How can I open myself to all that I can be?
