in which Ms Baroque is 40 per cent too tired to write a blog post

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It was the greyest August in 150 years, apparently. Officially. We had only 96 hours of sunshine in over four weeks: 40 per cent less than the usual 156 or so, which even then would amount to the equivalent of only ten really sunny days.

And it was 40 per cent rainier, too. Of course. And I lost my best umbrella, the one I paid £30 for in Southwold (average umbrella price in that town, if not even 40 per cent cheaper), thus guaranteeing the immediate & definitive end of a torrential downpour in 2006. (Typically, I lost it on one of the few days when it wasn’t in fact, raining, i was only carrying it because I thought it might rain. I left it in M&S.)

But I’m not bitter! And not really in a bad mood, either, only tired. Children are a trial. If you’re not worrying about one you’re worrying about another one. When they’re little they keep you awake because they are in the room, and then when they get bigger they keep you awake because they’re not in the room.

And the Urban Warrior, having been given loads of birthday money to buy some badly-needed new clothes, has spent it all on garish-print nylon zip-front hoodies, ditto baseball caps, baggy trackies, etc. And he’s cut his hair; this happened a while ago, but it looks much more serious with these new duds he’s got on now. He says, “I’m in my anti-hippie phase. I got sick of being a hippie; I’m rebelling against it.” But he’s a crap gangsta (or whatever it is he’s being) because he uses semi-colons when he talks, & I’m worrying now in case the real gangstas spot them.

Or in case the teachers don’t. He’s about to go talk to the nice man at City & Islington College. It’s full of those Rude Boys there, and he’s no good at talking to official people about paperwork. But he won’t let me come with him.

Mlle B is, meanwhile, camping out in Epping Forest with only about 16 of her closest friends, to celebrate her fifteenth birthday; she says her father is taking them and I believe her. Too bad he’s not the sort of guy I could really ask myself; the whole thing has been planned as Nothing to Do With Me…

“I don’t want to go,” she said to me this morning through gritted teeth, when I rang to talk to her about the school skirt problem (the problem being that M&S has sold out – apparently you have to sign them up for school skirts at birth now). “I don’t like my friends.”

What! Whaddya mean? You don’t like your friends?

“Mummy, you’re not supposed to like your friends at my age.”

Ran into The Boy Who Writes, the other day in Church Street. The one who’s cut his hair off and gone over to Buddhism. His hair isn’t even that short! He looks great, though he still has an enormous rucksak over his shoulder and no real idea whose house he’ll be kipping at the next night, which does disturb me. He’s really come through that bad 16-17 patch, though; it was nice to see, he looked very relaxed and kind of smiley. “Well, it grows,” he said. He’s off imminently back to India to learn yet more meditation and Buddhism, and will be travelling around in his usual itinerant fashion from place to place.

“Good luck with the trip,” I said as he went to catch up to the other boys.

“Thanks!” he said. “Good luck with the poetry.”

I’m sure I’ve had 40 per cent less quality sleep in August, and last night will have accounted for a good per cent or two of that. There were kid things, as always, kid kid kid. They are a bane those kids. And the dreams! Exactly like real life, only even scarier. About 40 per cent scarier.

I dreamed about someone who is real, very real indeed, so real that he was in fact asleep next to me, walking down into the dining room and shuffling along like a ghost. Greyly. It was still August, just about, remember, so he was about 40% greyer than normal. The shuffling was one of those dream things: it was the sheer effort of getting somebody else to do what you want them to do in your head, so that it comes out sort of jerky, not natural. In this case it was to lock the garden doors, because it was the middle of the night and we were asleep and the two laptops were both on their chargers down there. Not steeds. But it all went a bit wrong, because when I later woke up and had to go to the loo, as you do, I was scared of going down the stairs by myself in the dark, and I had to anyway, and it just wasn’t fun. And the garden doors were locked.

Nearly fell asleep typing this morning, at work. Managed to keep typing though. Didn’t fall off. And at lunchtime I sleepwalked down to M&S & managed to get my hands on the last size 12 black school skirt in London. And a size 12 black coffee.

So this week all I have to do is write yet another book review, do some other things, write a poem I have in mind, put away Mount Everest of Washing, clean the flat (again), work full-time, see some friends, keep (I mean stop) worrying about the kids, including the ones who didn’t warrant a blog post mention, because they are frankly too numerous, go back to the Hammershøi exhibition before it shuts, and – er – I don’t know. Get some sleep.

It is a theme, isn’t it.

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Filed under Life, ghosts, la famille Baroque, sleep