Two kinds of shiver and the bare table left adrift in the centre of the library

The shadows are strange in here today. Slow and deliberate but diffused as though less sure of themselves than they claim to be. There is sky of medium blue but I have disregarded it. In here the air feels rainsoaked and the smells are green and shaded, not pine nor eucalyptus in tone, neither so deep a green nor so olive. There is a sensation of being adrift in a haven while outside all things are moss.

The furniture remains rearranged from Saturday night's dinner party, here and there I find a wine-stained glass and dishes are strewn in a beautiful mess. Some of them washed some streaked with the final course of the night. The last guest departed, reluctantly at false dawn, as I shivered in my skin. There is a chill that comes and will not be denied when I have been awake three hours too many.

The dinner was successful, the guests full of chatter and goodwill, the wine never running out. We took turns at blindfolding each other and staggering around with a paper donkey's tail held out in one hand, the other hand stretched blindly into empty space. We decorated with linen napkins, flowers in empty jars, lit candles and borrowed plates. Mr X was the only person to successfully pin the tail on the donkey, his prize was to perform an interpretive dance to a song of his choice. Spencer eyed him suspiciously while he danced, almost always it is Spencer who is watched while we do the watching.

Now I have here some notes I made on Friday night when I was dragged, willingly, to Mr X's strange gig out West in one of those giant clubs with acres of poker machines and an all you can eat buffet featuring both Chinese dishes and pizza. I was horrified by the people I met, the forcefulness of their presence, the blunt and alarming manner they conducted themselves like alarmed and enlisted echnidas forced upright and forwards despite the spines and spikes pointing out in all directions and the hand grenade clutched in the palm of their right hand.

I am supposed to be at work but I found, after dressing there was a chill in the air and the strong urge to wrap knitted layers across my shoulders combined with a sensation that if I laced up my shoes and walked  down the front path I would turn to glass and shatter before I reached the corner. I am probably coming down with a cold, it always feels first as though I have been indelibly altered and then a day later I realise it the usual case of a mild fever and the manufacturing of snot. There is the hope that one day I won't notice and I'll just walk around like everybody else clutching a tissue and making a cup of tea.

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