Testing

In preparation for next month's writing blast, I thought I should conduct this experiment: to see what happens on one of my particularly bad and rag-doll days if I just put finger to keyboard. Well I know what happens. Sometimes you override and sometimes you don't. This morning I wrote one line in my notebook and went straight back to bed, returning to my dream about interminable train journeys with a mobile phone that didn't work, no-one around to tell me where the hell I was supposed to be heading and the ghastly realisation that wherever it was, I was travelling in the wrong direction. Kind of neat, the images that dreams throw up. After that kind of journey, no wonder I woke up exhausted and sick.

Yesterday I Herbatinted my hair (a mixture of red and mahogany) and today I am feeling the after-effects. Despite the claims that it has far less crap in it than other products I always feel after-effects. But Saturday is a big day - my daughter's twenty fifth birthday bash in London - so I am planning ahead, fingers crossed I will be over the worst by then, if I put in enough time on the rickety sleep-train. I have bought myself an outfit - a silk velvet jacket and long black skirt from Hampstead Bazaar in Brighton, cost a fortune but poetry prize money covered it nicely and I will be wearing it for the next hundred or so years. But at time of writing (we are heading towards the melancholy candles of late afternoon) I am still in my night-wear of black leggings and blue flannel pyjama top with sleeping cat-on-a-star motif (the trousers lost their elastic a couple of years back).

I am still feeling sick and scratched out, and thinking that the Herbatint was probably a bad idea, especially as I used a fair quantity of it. I have just noticed, though, that the leaves on the ash tree outside my window speak to the shades of red in my hair and velvet jacket. This is a good sign and will have to do me. Later on is book group, tomorrow a friend's birthday, and I have promises to keep - "and miles to go before I sleep."