– May I recount the dream I had last night or, to be more exact, in the hour before dawn?
– I’d really rather you didn’t.
– But it verges on the distressing. Nay, ‘alarming’ would be a better word.
– With every utterance my interest wanes.
– Or I could tell you about the nights when my brain refuses to sleep while my body cries out, silently, for the comforts of oblivion.
– Your manner of speech suggests you’ve been reading the wrong authors.
-I have a very esoteric library, and have been trying to read some of the books other people say I ought to read.
– As soon as you fall under the sway of ‘other people’ you are approaching deep water, which for you, who cannot swim, is, to use a word with which you are familiar, ‘alarming’.
– But they are clever people.
– Cleverer than you?
– I’ve always thought so.
– You are probably right.
Martin Stannard
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