Still awake

I'm going through a phase of sleep problems. Since blogging about being awake a week ago, I've woken up much too early twice, and now can't get to sleep at all. It's not visions of sugar plums that are dancing in my head, but of unpaid bills and future appointments and so-much-to-do-so-little-time and all the rest of that. There is a great deal of work that I could and should be doing, and must do quite soon, but I just can't be bothered. Five hours is about the limit of my concentration these days, after that I start drifting off-topic.

I stood at the window for a while now, counting the other apartments where the lights were on (one) and thought how pleasant the night air was: clear, fresh, a light breeze smelling of trees and damp earth. I haven't even been for a good walk in weeks, I really just can't be bothered about anything.

Dinner last night was at the last-minute invitation of an old friend whom we shall call Princess, an artist who was one of the first people I met in Stuttgart. An excellent four-course meal with good wine and fine conversation. (Paté and honeydew melon slices, an avocado and rucola salad (unusual combination but it worked quite well), tuna steaks with potatoes done in a way I'd never seen before: cut into thin slices and laid out overlapping each other like a fallen-over row of dominoes, drizzled with thyme and olive oil and roasted in the oven; and for desert mascarpone with fresh strawberries and blueberries.) Princess has mellowed over the years, I believe "ageing gracefully" is the technical term for it: confident, relaxed, non-obsessive, willing to accept the occasional blemish. She could never have managed a dinner like this when we first met. (I still couldn't manage it.)

Among the guests were my former colleague Ageing Yuppie and a book designer who probably won't figure in these pages again so she doesn't need a name. She was a puzzlement to me, because we should have met ages ago: she is friends with Princess whom I see regularly and Yuppie's business partner whom I see irregularly, she designed and produced Famous Sculptor's previous catalogue, and she worked for years in a design studio in Berlin which I visited a few times. Given all of that social and geographical overlap, how can we not have met? A mystery.