Death's rehearsals

We’ve been invited to a pre-Christmas party today. I tried to remember my last party outside the family. Years ago, but when or what I can’t be sure. I imagine people nodding: who’d be so foolhardy as to ask him? His blog says it all. A walking black hole.

Too true, I’m not an ideal guest. But this time perhaps the reason is unexpected. It’s 04.21 and I can’t sleep. Why? Because of Putin and the Ukraine. Given the most recent developments, far away from Kiev, I sense – for the first time - Vladimir’s going to win. And many many people will die as have already died.

As I might have died during the fifties, when I was a conscripted military men. There were several warlike opportunities. Instead I’ve reached very old age. Yet can’t sleep.

I flatter myself I have a well-developed imagination, thus I write fiction. But imagination can be a curse. I remember the way the city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine was systematically destroyed; that arid shell now provides raw material for envisaging what may happen to the country’s capital city. Presided over by the tight smiling man in the Kremlin who may, or may not, wear a toupée. An irrelevant detail which, nevertheless, stimulates relevant thought.

Shakespeare’s good on sleep and especially its absence. But this isn’t the time for easy quotes. Sleep replenishes the living body and should keep disturbing images at bay. But I – having slid lusciously beneath the duvet at midnight – must now sit around wakefully a few hours later. Thinking about irony. That Ukraine has slipped down the priorities of the news organisations to be replaced with newer horrors in Gaza. Where death is strangely more immediate.

Time to re-try the bed. There’s the party to be considered.