Waiting for godknows

I set out through the driving ‘snow’ of Brighton and wend my way to Reading, where I am to be interviewed for a post which I ought to walk into but quite plainly won’t. I managed a short conversation with the chap going in before me, and realised that his brown suit matched his beard, just as my black suit matches mine. This will be remarked upon, in private if not in the interview itself. These times, these waiting times, are always interesting, as you seep indecision and confidence as the time ticks slowly by.

I have not prepared myself suitably. It seems strangely beyond me. It’s as if I’m willing myself towards failure, towards humiliation. Part of it is simply that when I sit down to read of an afternoon, eyes shut, and I sleep. It starts with a heaviness of the lids, sometimes accompanied by the feeling of a band, like an Alice band (If I could leap, like Alice …), slowly tightening around my forehead, and on rarer occasions these days, by the feeling that someone grips my wrists. The lid soon close, and it takes all my powers of concentration to force them to part, though I can never keep them there.

My head snaps and I realise I went. For how long? Between 2.30 and 4 is the worst time. It is as if lunch, whether the physical fact of it or the break in what I laughingly call ‘concentration’, works with the dopamine agonists to cause spot narcolepsy. The only cure or palliative treatment is physical work. When I yawn … when I yawn my left arm goes into spasm, like a sort of super tremor. It’s almost as if it’s the stored up shaking denied by the mirapexin. This used to be the only time I shook. This is slowly changing. Often, when I’m working out (I have an interview in ten minutes and my lids are going. Alice is here. I’ll be back) …

He walks back with a face like a kipper. I suspect it hasn’t gone well … that and the fact that he’s out after twenty minutes. I am hauled in. it happens. I’m not sure I’ve ever been less convincing in my life.

I haven’t the heart to finish …