Dreams and Hallucinations - I hope they were

I have spent the last couple of evenings on my own for the first time in a few weeks because of my most recent illness. I haven’t had the most successful time; improved by my brother and sister-in-law coming over for the day on Saturday and making me eat, cleaning a carpet and clearing up behind me. The morning before I had decorated myself and the bed by falling asleep with a hot cuppa and hadn’t adequately cleared up. Saturday morning I flew up the stairs with a cuppa and decorated the wall and it won’t even clean off with sugar soap. So two mugs died in two days and since they were Emma Bridgewater I felt like they needed a eulogy!

Last night I might an interesting decision on my way to returning to college and took a smaller dose of oramorph. The first annoying thing that woke me was the toilet seemed to be flushing a lot downstairs. ‘How inconvenient’ I thought first. Then my second thought was ‘whoever that is needs to go to the hospital’. I thought it would be very stupid to go down – firstly because I’m not very good on the stairs at the moment, and secondly because what sort of person comes into your house in the middle of the night and keeps flushing the toilet. I realised it must be the cats, but how they were managing to reach my very authentic high cistern I couldn't imagine. Creepy! I went back to sleep.

Then I woke up because Roy Cropper was taking up most of the bed; which was surprising because I’d bought a super-king sized bed before moving. I was also especially surprised to find myself able to kick him squarely in the back which was surprising considering how restricted my legs have been for the past week. Then there was a woman shouting ‘Hello’ up at the window and when I got to the window it was Hayley Cropper. Then I saw myself in the mirror and realised that Roy had made a mistake. I had been out taking the dog for a walk in my red waterproof with my new dark hair. It was clear that Roy had been unable to resist me. Then I actually woke up properly and began to wonder if the purple crop had been such a good idea!! Hayley Cropper had not been the look I was aiming for.

I then thought of a brilliant way to check out the toilet issue without being seen. I would just crawl up the wall and across the ceilings to get down stairs. Then they would never see me. I thought this was a great idea, but it never happened; either because I tried it or it didn’t work out or because I was actually asleep at this point. It felt really weird though, a bit like that scene with the baby in Trainspotting, but in reverse and with a much bigger baby.

I came downstairs this morning and rang my mum to come and stay. The second thing to do was ring all my friends for reassurance that I don’t look like Hayley Cropper. When I feel very well I’ll be throwing out the red anorak.