Sunday 4 January 2015

This could be Heaven...


I have got to break a delicious habit I have formed over the last week or so, and that is going to bed at around 12.30 am and getting up at about 12.30 pm. I have been having breakfast at around 12.45 whereas when I get up at a reasonably early time I have no breakfast at all, so I suppose you could call it lunch.

Last night, I said to H.I. that if I could afford the time off, I would very much like to spend days on end in a four-poster bed (a real one, not the useless things that some hotels get made) during the winter, rising only to wash, eat and go to the pub. She said that you need money to live a lifestyle like that, and I remembered Badger, who refused to do anything about Toad until the snows had gone from the Wild Wood.

Not that I am idle when I am lying there for hours. When I am not consciously plotting the year ahead - starting in May, when the animals wake up - I am sub-consciously going on long journeys, often in vintage cars or riding vintage motorcycles, rather like Toad, in fact.

I drift in and out to such an extent, that after a while I can no longer tell the difference between reality and what is actually happening. It takes a lot of skill and practice to achieve this level of dreaming, but to some creatures it comes naturally.

One of the creatures in the bit of story I posted up the other day mentioned the fact that reptiles have no sub-conscious. I don't know how they discovered this, but just imagine the implications of not having to dream - particularly if you are of a religious disposition, or you are of such an extreme religious disposition that you actually believe there are places called Heaven and Hell.

This New Year's Eve was a ticketed event at our pub, but I would not have gone even if it was free and not £30 to get in. The organisers divided the night's revels into two venues - the pub itself and a nearby, subterranean night-club. The pub was decorated in white and called 'Heaven', and the club was done in black and called 'Hell'. The tickets were restricted to 750, and over 700 of them sold.

The pub's maximum safe capacity is about 500, and on the night - as I expected may be the case - everyone wanted to go there rather than the dark and dingy, subterranean club over the road.

The garden entrance began to get dangerously congested, and room was running out on the inside as well. Some ruffians tried to simply barge past my doorman friend who was taking tickets, but they bounced off him. Maybe that is why they are called 'bouncers'.

Toward the middle of the evening, my friend resorted to telling the bona-fide ticket-holders to "Go to Hell", and for once he wasn't being abusive.

11 comments:

  1. Almost 750 people in it - are you speaking of The Bell? Then I have to ask: where was Heaven, with such a crowd around them? I would prefer a four-poster bed!

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    1. Yes, it was The Bell. Heaven - as usual - was in my bed...

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  2. My people's house in West Chiltington, Sussex, had a knocker on the door of the main bedroom. In winter the previous owner didn't even bother to get up at mid-day; he hibernated. His maid brought up all he required; hence the knocker. She was summoned by a bell system.

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    1. I'm sure there's some clever ripost waiting to be said regarding knockers and maids, but I'll leave that to the male portion of the readership.

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    2. That's sophisticated - in my day, the only way I could get my hands on the maid's knockers was to shout down the corridor. (Will that do, Marty?)

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  3. Regarding the bed information - you begin to sound rather dangerously like Mr Toad, I must say.

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    1. Toad didn't spend enough time in bed, I think. Not good for a cold-blooded driver.

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  4. And I thought I was being indulgent rising at 8.00. Happy new slovenly year.

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    1. Oh it all changes as of tomorrow, Em. As of then, I begin building a new empire.

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