There is a tap on the window!!!

This would normally be an Exciting Event. However, as it wakes me up I immediately start off with negative perceptions of the tapper.

I look at the alarm clock. It is around a quarter past midnight. The LTLP is away, so it is just me, Honey Bear and Mr Mitt in bed. There is another tap - this time more of a tappity-tap. Some form of night creature is tappity-tapping on my window. I bid it to disappear, using the power of my mind.

A different noise. Some gravel against the window. I know it is gravel, because one side of the window is not actually closed. Somebody is throwing gravel through my bedroom window. This is antisocial behaviour if I have ever seen it. The power of my mind is clearly not adequate, so I shout 'fuck off!' in a loud and cross voice.

I cast my mind back over the evening to establish clues as to the mystery gravel thrower.

I had actually left the Village Pub early that evening. Partly because I didn't want any more to drink, partly because I'd been in there since five pm, but mainly because I had found myself on the brink of agreeing to buy an eighteen-thousand-pound boat from Len the Fish.

It had seemed like such a good idea, as I would then have a boat whereas beforehand I did not have a boat, but the thorny issue of eighteen thousand pounds and formulating some form of plausible explanation to tell the LTLP had tipped the balance in favour of purchase being a Bad Idea.

There is a particular technique to leaving the Village Pub early. It involves finishing one's beer, placing the glass on the bar, saying very simply 'right, I'm going now', and walking out of the door. If you do not do this then people try to convince you to stay, buy you more drink etc., and you are forced to remain.

Big A is a master at this, but I do not do it often. He and Short Tony had looked at me incredulously as I spoke. "What do you mean?" one of them had said, but I was already out the door as they spoke, striding down the puddled path and turning down the hill towards the cottage.

I'd been tremendously pleased with my mature leaving-the-pub-before-closing-time attitude. Yet here I lie, wide awake now, listening to increasing quantities of gravel being hurled against the glass and curtains.

In some pique, I walk across to the window in my pants.

Continued on Tuesday.