Sleep

It's my first day of a new shift and I didn't get much sleep last night.

I do tend to go through periodic bouts of insomnia which I accept with the help of cups of tea and the extraordinary offerings of late night satellite TV. The delight of my cat helps: he embraces my three am arrival with all the enthusiasm of an Enid Blighton school child. 'Crickey! A midnight feast! Ripping, let's open the sardines and condensed milk!!'

Last night I was woken up by a fight outside, I think in Polish. I had a look and was horrified to see two huge skinheads towering over a tiny girl. After an anxious moment during which I ran through all the things in the rented house I could use for hitting (nothing much except my heavy set of template drawings) it became clear that the men were getting the worst of it. I'm no expert in body language, but I've read enough Desmond Morris to see that whatever these guys had done, it wasn't big, it wasn't clever and their sister (?) was considering writing home to mama in painful detail. The men waved their hands about in appeasing gestures and shuffled from one foot to the other until things calmed down. They were then permitted to get into a pimped red hatchback which they drove away very slowly and very quietly. The girl dusted her hands together, something I thought people only did in bad films, and went inside.

I didn't really mind waking up for that, it was great. Besides I slept on the ferry coming over. I may not sleep at night, but there's something about Red Funnel ferries that knocks me out cold every time. I slept through screaming kids and yelling parents on a ferry so crowded that I had to fold up small to share my bench with two grannies and their packamac collection. When I woke up one said to me 'I expect you're tired dear, a nice rest on the Island will do you good'. Yeah, right.