For some reason I couldn’t sleep

At last I have finished the “project”. I knew when I entered the office yesterday that it had to be done that day. I worked fifteen hours without a break (occasionally I went for a walk round the floor) and it was finished at 12.30 in the morning.

The “project” contains over 5,400 pieces of information, all of which had to be researched, checked, and presented in an engaging style. If it is accepted (and it is bound to be accepted) it will “lock” a client into the agency for many years to come. Certainly I feel I now know the client’s business better than they know it themselves.

I left the agency, locking the back door after me. The security light in the back “mews” (actually a scruffy yard) failed to come on, so I had to feel my way in the pitch dark until I reached my car, afraid of dropping my laptop. Long drive along almost empty roads - I got home at 4am feeling exhausted, and immediately went to bed (although not quite immediately as the dog got up to welcome me, wagging his tail, and I had to take him downstairs and let him out into the garden for a few minutes).

I had promised myself that I would sleep all of today, as I have averaged only five hours a night for about the past three weeks. But for some reason I couldn’t sleep, and I got up at nine. Blustery wet day outside, as I had a cup of tea and read through the morning’s post.

Mid-morning I drove deep into the countryside, eventually arriving at The Three Tuns. A happy pub in summertime, today it was empty at 11 o’clock (“we’ll have people coming in at lunchtime” the barmaid told me). I sat on a worn Windsor chair at a window table (rain spattering on the glass), had a beer and a whisky chaser, and thought about an early lunch of homemade steak and kidney pie with fat chips.

But before I could order lunch my mobile ’phone rang and I was called into the office to make some final adjustments to the “project” before it was presented. Horrible drive to the station and horrible train journey up to London reading The Independent (very good review section which was in the form of a booklet - I kept it when I left the rest of the newspaper on the train). Into the office to make the adjustments, staying about an hour, before making the long weary journey back home again.

No great sense of achievement, just a tired emptiness.