Here is a diary entry of mine from the year 2000. One day from august each day this week.

Friday - Midsummer Nights Dream

Up at 6:05, strangely my alarm isn't set to go off until 6:30. Somehow my body must be just rejecting sleep as a non-option. I attempt to get back to it, but it appears to be lost.

Work is crazy. And I almost can't do it. I'm so lost. I'm floating along. And we are having a really bad day in terms of things to be done. I was supposed to be doing something really important in the morning with two guys, they had been out drinking the previous night. One of them didn't show up until 2pm after vomiting all morning and the other one showed up at 8am. The guy who was in was certainly in a worse state than me. I had to nurse him through his duties on top of all the other things that were happening. Amazingly I managed to leave at around five. I got on the tube, and sat down.

Midsummer Nights Dream was at Regents Park and so the tube was a necessary evil. As I sat down I realised what a really terrible idea it had been. I'm almost falling asleep and I decide that I can't possibly go to this performance. I have to cancel. But there are people waiting for me, so I continue on this journey. I get off the tube and walk up to the theatre through the park. The walk is about fifteen minutes long and is quite nice. The weather is the best that it's been all week. I see Susan sitting on a bench and I go to join her. She's talking about all the things that she has been doing over the day, and I feel stupid for feeling so tired. Or rather not necessarily stupid, but useless. I mean she's older than me by a way, and I certainly can't muster the energy she has.

I decide to bail. As I leave, on the way out of the park, I bump into my mother and explain again the situation. I tell her I'm going to go back to her house so that I can just relax. Certainly she says, "just remember that your aunt is still visiting." This is not good news. The weekend before she had been there and that's what set up this whole tiredness thing anyway. I had had to sleep in the living room and had only got 4 hours sleep. None of this was good. And I wanted to just go down there, call for a pizza on the way, have a beer in my hand, the tv on and just do nothing all evening. There was no way to do that with them there. I would have to go back to my fathers house. Just because it would be easier to convince them to let me sleep.

I jumped in a taxi and got him to take me back. No walking and no changing lines in taxies. As I walk in the house I see a note on the kitchen table... "Alex, we've gone out to dinner, we won't be back until late, hope you had fun in the park."

Joy! I'm free to do what I want. I get pizza, beer and TV and I'm in bed by 10pm.