The Insomnia Film Festival (1)

The Insomnia Film Festival (1): White

I’ve not been sleeping well, not for a long time, and particularly not since we got back from Venice. I wake regularly, and on one or two occasions each night, am unable to get back to sleep in a reasonable time. In the dark, with time ticking by, and getting no rest, frustration mounts and getting back to sleep becomes more and more unlikely, then impossible.

The only way to combat this is to have something to read, something to watch, something to do while my mind cools back down to a temperature low enough to make sleep a possibility.

This has made the weekends, and particularly Friday and Saturday nights something to look forward to, as there’s no pressure to get rest when rest isn’t available, because of work the next day. Friday and Saturday, wide awake in the middle of the night becomes an opportunity rather than a frustration. Last night I watched the second film in The Colours Trilogy, White. Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski made the films, Blue, White and Red, with the themes liberty, equality and fraternity and they’re described as an anti-tragedy, an anti-comedy and an anti-romance. It’s a great film, mesmerising, passing in what seems a few short minutes and scenes. It has the best pre-paid mercenary mercy-killing scene (and the only…) in the history of cinema.

The carpet situation…

…or variations on The Bonnie Situation (Pulp Fiction, 1994) #1.

It began with a text message. Either BLISS thought she’d mentioned it, and hadn’t; or she had, and the early onset dementia was playing up (again); or she knew she hadn’t mentioned it and was counting on me assuming an early onset dementia moment. “Are you ok for the carpet?” What carpet? I rang and tried the direct approach:

“What carpet?”

“There’s some carpet for the dog sanctuary at S’s. Some small offcuts of new carpet. Can you pick it up?”

“OK”

The next morning it became clear that:

‘Some’ actually meant ‘loads’. Enough to fill a Focus estate, all except the driver’s seat (reserved for me).

‘Small offcuts’ meant ‘dirty big rolls…’ with the emphasis on the ‘dirty’, because:

‘New’ meant waste stripped out from a care home. For incontinent cats.

The dust made me cough and my eyes itch and I’ve come up in a rash. The car smells like a ferrets’ cage just before the monthly clean. This morning we sorted the carpet, cut it into squares, stacked and wrapped and labelled it ready to take to the improvised storage somewhere ready for shipping over to Greece. I hope D-the dog’s buddies back home are grateful little puppies.

Then we loaded the bus up and BLISS headed off to the tip. Apparently she took DLL and not me because “it isn’t worth the moaning” and she’s probably right. I do go off into stuck record mode about dump staff wandering about with clipboards and the time it takes to get shot of your unwanted rubbish. So, ten minutes later there’s a knock on the door and there’s DLL demanding money. We’re now shopping at the tip, apparently. They did come back with an elephant-sized dog basket that after a clean was like new. But it has come to this. Too poor even for Lidl and Aldi, we’ll soon have a loyalty card for Stig’s Second Hand Emporium, Depository and Auction Rooms.