My high-powered job on Radio 4 required regular trips to London for meetings. Because I needed to be up early the next morning to catch the 05:40 train, I had to consider my sleeping options carefully. The first possibility was to bed down next to BM, RG and TPR on the ground floor, but BM vetoed this idea on the grounds that I would disturb him when I woke. I therefore headed upstairs where I had a choice of three beds, including a double that I sometimes shared with my husband. I had just decided on the single bed when several classmates from my undergraduate days walked into the room and took what they thought were “their” places.
I had forgotten that this was the reunion weekend, even though I was the one who had organised it. Everyone had clearly enjoyed themselves. One of the most popular reunion activities had been comparing prescriptions for the ailments of middle age. I spotted the label on a discarded box of tablets. It simply read “Mad”. “That makes perfect sense”, I thought, casting a glance at the group of menopausal women gathered around me, engrossed in a discussions of the fate of Cliff, who had apparently been pursued to his death by a BBC television documentary team.
Eventually everyone settled down for the night. I awoke at 03:00 – too early for the train, but too close to the time that I needed to get up to get back to sleep again. I carried my clothes from the bedroom to dress elsewhere without disturbing the others. The doctors’ surgery in Stockbridge seemed a good place to do this, but when I reached it (after almost being run over by a lorry on Dundas Street) I discovered that the house next door had been turned into a drug den where the resident squatters chain-smoked while dancing to UB40’s Red red wine .
Dreamaticus 