The Insomniac Hour

3:12am, and I am wide awake. I'm not sure if it is the sea I can hear outside or passing vehicles. Silence, apart from that, and the whirring of the laptop. My room has that ox-hour feel; timeless, frozen. A capsule floating on illimitable seas.
I have actually been asleep tonight. I returned from the pub at about 10pm, rang my parents and was asleep by 11pm. I even remember dreaming. In a room with Andy, Joe and Ben. Ben lying on a mattress in a room I didn't recognise. The feel of some basement. Talking about mental illness with Andy and Joe. Some conflict with Andy because we were both talking at the same time.
Then I woke up.
I was fully expecting to fall back to sleep, but didn't. I had a cigarette, tried again. Nothing. My bed wasn't even feeling comfortable. My back was sore. Nothing. I finally conceded defeat, made myself a cup of decaffineated coffee and switched the lamp on.
The small hours, the hour of the ox. Weird space. It doesn't feel remotely haunted tonight though, this time. Maybe it is the house of bedsits I currently reside in, which possesses little in the way of unquiet atmospheres. Maybe my reception to any atmosphere has been superceded by the melancholy of this weekend.
Roll another cigarette. try to stop thinking.

After Friday's rain and isolation, I was pleased to see that yesterday (or today - where do the small hours belong?) was, if not bright and sunny, was at least tolerable. I headed down to the Meeting Place cafe on the seafront. Drank instant coffees and read the Guardian, soon joined by Joe who had been still asleep until I phoned him.
January closes in on us. Claustrophobia season. Still too cold to linger for long outside. We ended up at the art gallery, looking at an exhibition of the history of the land girls, women who worked on farms during wartime, while the men were abroad, fighting and dying. This was quite interesting, not so much for the history, which was already known, but for the photographs. Black and white, obviously. Smiling women by tractors and hay bales, hoisting spades, and walking down lost English lanes. Something obviously haunting about old photographs, ghosts caught on chemicals and paper, smiling across the decades.
There were other things of interest too, apart from the photographs. Relics of wartime; identity passes, guide books, a gas mask that both Joe and myself tried on. There were three illustrations I was particularly interested in, wood cuts from some contemporary publication, showing the women at work. This was quite eerie. It looked remarkably like my own drawings, unnervingly so. Insightful too, for it showed me the technique to use in my current drawing, the first illustration in the Book of Deleriums. Grass blades and foliage. How to use black and white and cross hatching so the different spaces don't interfere visually with one another.
We called in to see Sarah at her studio afterwards. A calm, pleasing place. Drinking cups of herbal tea, perched on stools. We stayed there a good hour or two. Joe went out into the alleyway outside for a long conversation with his mother. It was falling into twilight by the time we left.
We ended up at The Evening Star, and then at The Temple Bar. The former seemed like it was gearing up for a good night. Andy joined us from a day out in Lewes. Pints of ale, talking to a man next to us about his shop in Whitehawk. A thousand pounds a week in rent. He showed us the three thousand pounds in cash he had in his pocket he was going to give the landlord after he had finished his pint. A nice man, we both agreed, until we realised he hadn't asked us anything about ourselves. I'm still not sure what kind of shop he had.
The melancholy that had been threatening all week started to come down. Couldn't shake it off. Not surprised though, the past seven days have been full of warnings and black-eyed dogs. Headed to the Temple Bar - Andy and Al had relatives down. The beer was overpriced (£3:50 a pint) and I soon headed home, where after talking to my parents I lay down to sleep... which is where this post started of course.
3:39am now. Haven't even started my coffee. I really need to go for a long walk tomorrow, try to walk off this dreadful gloom hanging over me. Maybe catch the bus to Rottingdean and walk back along the Undercliff Walk.
Trapped in January, the limited horizons of the insomniac hour.
Roll another cigarette, and try not to think of black dogs a few steps behind.