Night swimming deserves a quiet night..

Wolves, faeries and dragons surround me and the wolf man throws his head back to howl at the moon at my feet but it’s not a howl I hear rather a shrill buzz, buzz, buzz…

Eyes thick with sleep cower within their heavy lidded prisons and a clumsy hand reaches out to an i-phone that dances as it buzzes on the bedside table. Its bright light blazes the thick veil off my eyes and the dark room is lit by this dancing torch. Wearily I look at the fascia and see the words unknown just before the phone stops its dance at the edge of the table preventing the first instance (in my limited experience anyway) of death by dancing. Turning over into a twisted duvet and burrowing under pillows I slip into the lair of wolves, dragons and faeries and the buzz, buzz, buzz starts again..

A dull pressure cresting my brow and knotting at my temples means that the caller will get the full force of my ire. Armed with my irritation and cloaked in indignance I reach for the dancing device and bark into it.

                “What?”

A mechanical transatlantic voice asks me if I am aware of the savings I can make; and before I can hear another word, I let out the howl the wolf was meant to make. I press at the keypad to see if it would connect me to a homo-sapien who would be ready like the moon to receive the howls that are waiting in the pit of my stomach but each option I press sends me to another automaton and for the sake of my neighbours the howling remains unsounded. Anger turns to incredulity for a brief moment: who, why, what, how could telemarketing have got so desperate? Meaningless conjecturing is instantly replaced with a fresh wave of rage that then comes boomeranging back at me. So much for all those countless online registrations forms filled by me which insisted that the field for my mobile phone number was compulsory. Greed to get my hands on the last pair of tickets to an underground event or the only remaining voucher for a discount expiring in minutes leads to a unknown call from a robot in a different space-time dimension.

Wide awake at three in the morning I daren’t to go to sleep as this new event seems specifically designed to occur when I hit REM. So I stay awake and watch the moonlight hit the water outside and throw crested light and dark striations across the pale bedroom walls. The trees outside are silent in the still heat and the restless spirit of night tangles me into its own special embrace. At the window I look out to see a city that is asleep for that one hour in the day when the denizens of club-ville have caught their last taxi home and the milk vans and HGV drivers are yet to sail past the ringed avenue that circles the centre of this agitated metropolis.

I flick on Spotify and create a new playlist starting with Night Swimming by REM (http://preview.tinyurl.com/y8pbvbz) that seems fairly appropriate, but my dear readers what songs would you add to this playlist for the sleepless?

Beauty is love and peace is fine.