At 3.30am this very morn, I was woken from my chardonnay-laced slumber by the sounds of someone trying to break into my flat. I lay in the dark staring at the outline of someone at my (first-floor) bedroom window, attempting to lift the sash which I knew was unlocked because I am stupid. At the start I was literally frozen with terror, I could move my eyes but nothing else responded. Every nightmarish headline I have ever read flashed through my mind. Had anyone else been in my flat at the time, had I not spent much of the evening getting drunk in front of sadistic serial killer television programme Criminal Minds, I might possibly have reacted in a more sensible or logical way than I did, which was wait until the sash began to creak, freak out entirely and throw my lamp at the window. At which my neighbour – for it was he – fell backwards off the porch roof he was delicately balancing on and crashed straight onto the pavement below, fortunately breaking his fall by semi-landing on the wheelie-bins. Let’s face it, Hotch and Reid would not have been impressed.
Thus it was that I ended up waking half the street, having to call an ambulance and sitting with the poor guy who was completely off his tits on something or another, and considering his English is extremely poor when he’s stone cold sober and not out of his head on drugs and extreme back pain, I don’t think either of us understood a word the other said, apart from general (and, on his part, I think very generous) sentiments of apology and mistakes. He is fine now, and will likely remember his key from now on, as that was the cause for him to stage an unsuccessful break-in on what he believed to be his own flat. Even though his flat is actually the floor above ours, but really, at 3.30am while tripping, I guess that can happen to anyone.
Anyway, such moments I think provide moment of thought. I wasn’t in any danger from my wayward Polish Arthur J Raffles, but the point is from the moment I realised someone was at my window, the fear that gripped me was of the dawn of a new part of my life so dreadful that all the little nuisances and irritations currently plaguing me were non-issues. For one thing, I might have been dead, but weirdly that didn’t scare me quite as much as the prospect of what he might do to me before that. In other words, things slip into perspective.
Breaking up is never easy to do, or so I have heard. Certainly personal experience has always backed up this hypothesis. Breaking up is even harder when it is more or less entirely by mutual consent. It means the tedious business of sorting out the bureaucracy – bills, Wii games, driving licences, internet subscriptions – everything that needs to be changed or shared becomes a ridiculously overly-emphasised game of swapping platitudes. Elaborate politeness can only stretch so far across the Atlantic, but we are doing our best. Because basically I’m the one doing the practical stuff and let me tell you that is the exact the opposite of how things have been done for years in this partnership.
The last few weeks have not been an unmitigated joy, with general feelings of guilt, personal recrimination and regrets swilling around in a heady cocktail concluding in last night’s plunge into a vino coma drooling in front of Aaron Hotchner breaking doors down in his FBI vest while waving his gun. One sentiment which I took in even before my brush with death was a quote mentioned in the show from Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead: “We cross our bridges and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that once our eyes watered”. At the time, I heard it in a pessimistic, self-pitying sense, but post-great-cat-burglary I see it differently. I feel the loss strongly, but I’m okay. And I’ll be better. It is all good, and that memory of smoke and eyes watering are a good thing, not something to regret.
Although I’m going to start locking my windows now I’m by myself more.
Thus it was that I ended up waking half the street, having to call an ambulance and sitting with the poor guy who was completely off his tits on something or another, and considering his English is extremely poor when he’s stone cold sober and not out of his head on drugs and extreme back pain, I don’t think either of us understood a word the other said, apart from general (and, on his part, I think very generous) sentiments of apology and mistakes. He is fine now, and will likely remember his key from now on, as that was the cause for him to stage an unsuccessful break-in on what he believed to be his own flat. Even though his flat is actually the floor above ours, but really, at 3.30am while tripping, I guess that can happen to anyone.
Anyway, such moments I think provide moment of thought. I wasn’t in any danger from my wayward Polish Arthur J Raffles, but the point is from the moment I realised someone was at my window, the fear that gripped me was of the dawn of a new part of my life so dreadful that all the little nuisances and irritations currently plaguing me were non-issues. For one thing, I might have been dead, but weirdly that didn’t scare me quite as much as the prospect of what he might do to me before that. In other words, things slip into perspective.
Breaking up is never easy to do, or so I have heard. Certainly personal experience has always backed up this hypothesis. Breaking up is even harder when it is more or less entirely by mutual consent. It means the tedious business of sorting out the bureaucracy – bills, Wii games, driving licences, internet subscriptions – everything that needs to be changed or shared becomes a ridiculously overly-emphasised game of swapping platitudes. Elaborate politeness can only stretch so far across the Atlantic, but we are doing our best. Because basically I’m the one doing the practical stuff and let me tell you that is the exact the opposite of how things have been done for years in this partnership.
The last few weeks have not been an unmitigated joy, with general feelings of guilt, personal recrimination and regrets swilling around in a heady cocktail concluding in last night’s plunge into a vino coma drooling in front of Aaron Hotchner breaking doors down in his FBI vest while waving his gun. One sentiment which I took in even before my brush with death was a quote mentioned in the show from Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead: “We cross our bridges and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that once our eyes watered”. At the time, I heard it in a pessimistic, self-pitying sense, but post-great-cat-burglary I see it differently. I feel the loss strongly, but I’m okay. And I’ll be better. It is all good, and that memory of smoke and eyes watering are a good thing, not something to regret.
Although I’m going to start locking my windows now I’m by myself more.
1 comment:
'Rotten luck, Old Girl', Dick Hawk-Monitor
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