Night Stalker

I cannot sleep, again, and find myself on the balcony over the park at around 0300 this morning. I am pretty sure that the person out there that is lurking near the newly vandalized "Band of Hope" monument cannot see me. Not that I am made in any way anxious by the prospect of being revealed, sat up here here, as I am in my dressing gown, and behind the sanctuary of my high railings. Not to mention the park wall and the locked gates. I cannot but help think back to a time when I was still a smoker, the flaming, orange butt having given my vantage point away quite early on in this game of cat & mouse. However, with my big binoculars, I can see him. Not wanting to get involved in these unknown, mysterious, antics, I make some notes on the HP Tablet and slope off in search of more MAO inhibitors for the gnawing pain in my feet. This is NOT GOOD. A decade ago I started with neuropathy in my left foot, and now, it is with me, nibbling away at all of my extremities. There are moments, nay, days, where I fear that I will suddenly and irrevocably snap, snatch up a meat cleaver, and hack off a toe or two. Merely to bear witness to my suspicion that there could be some small release, not matter how brief in these imagined actions.

When I was a child, I recollect our insane mother, Joan Armstrong, taking us three to the great park near home, just for a stroll in the swirling autumn leaves. There, I became somehow convinced that squirrels were similar to us humans: that they foraged and fought during the day, resting only at night. Now, I understand that they are like me instead: that they do as they care, and if they happen to be out and about in the wee hours and on my balcony at the same time, then this IS GOOD. I hand out some raisins into the glass bowl on the table beside me and watch in delight as my food is tested and then snatched to go back to the nest.

The peeper out there, for I am sure that is what he is, is now singularly aware that he is the observed. The body language suddenly and acutely changes. Looking slowly around  and behind, he is pulling up his hoodie even further over his forehead and crouching down into the ground. Momentarily distracted by my own overwhelming urge to rip off a handful of my own toes, I nurse a generous brandy and put down the heavy optics, vigorously and impatiently massaging aromatherapy oil into my feet with my free hand. Now, really needing to view just what it is that I am doing down there, I suddenly reach up and snap on the large, 1,000,000 Candela searchlight torch that I have carried out with me.

This sudden, blinding beam of white lights up the balcony like a bolt from Zeus and sends forth into the park such a crack of illumination that anyone out there would have to be both blind and deaf not to register me sitting here, in my eerie. I am surprised that the scorching, fat beam doesn't cut down some poor commercial aircraft into the greenery of Peel Park itself. I hear myself uttering discouraging words of surprise at the intensity of the light, flailing as I am, in my seat, just helpless with the shock, just moments before I can discern our chap's feet hitting the tarmac and then vanishing into the distance, quickly lost over the grassy fields.

Next time, my friend, you pick somewhere different. You are known to me. I have seen you somewhere during the day quite recently, and I will remember.

In the morning, before I go to the recording studios, I am planning to drive over to Spring Hill's Pain Clinic to get some professional input, once more. Dr Susan may be long gone, but I still have to be rid of this craving to tear off my limbs before Friday. They know me of old down there, by now. I'm on first name terms with even the Gatekeeper. I am a success story by any clinical standards in pain management: every time I go, we tweak some old, and creakingly ancient medications, then combine them in threes. The pain will recede, quickly, and I will skip off happily into the sunset for another 4 months. I am lucky to have such good support.

I slink into bed at 0400 and remain awake until the alarm screams at 0640.