On Times Unfamiliar.

Last night I had a full six hours unbroken sleep. I haven’t had more than two at most for the past eight days and I felt quite a lot better for it this morning. But those who know – or claim to know – about such things tell me that the road ahead will be full of steps up and steps down from day to day, and so the watchword must be patience. I wish I were a more patient person.

The odd thing about last night’s rest, however, was the persistent dream I kept having, seemingly all through the whole six hours. I was in a church in Derby, and in front of me stood a group of six people who I knew to be five brothers and a sister. I knew that they were destined ever to be reincarnated in the same relationship and that they were due to be executed at the same point in every life. I knew that their end was nigh, that it wouldn’t be pleasant, and that I was in some way connected with them or at least would be affected by their deaths. It made me fearful and I remained so throughout.

I woke this morning to evidence of a heavy snowfall overnight, but it had turned to rain and the lane beyond my garden was running like a river. I also saw a mini waterfall coming out of the stone wall embankment at the back of my house which retains the higher ground of the field beyond the boundary hedge. In the twelve years since I’ve lived here, all through the wettest winters and the record wet summer of 2012, I’ve never seen that phenomenon before. And then two doctors turned up to check on my progress since that awful bout of extreme pain and fever two nights ago. They went away satisfied, but I couldn’t help remarking that my life is replete with doctors these days. I’ve seen more of them in the past three months than I’d encountered in the whole of my life before that.

These are strange, disjointed and disturbing times full of pain, anxieties, uncertainties and the generally unfamiliar, and I am yet to acquire confidence in the fact that my present condition won’t find some way to kill me. There is no clinical evidence for it, but I did have that visitation, remember? It seems I might have repulsed him for now, but time will tell. No doubt my progress or otherwise will be reported on this increasingly heavy journal. I do hope I’m not being too maudlin, for that would never do.