A marvellous night for a moon doze

Iwould have thought you were used to this weather, what with all your holidays in exotic climes,” said the driver as I hunkered down, panting and sweating profusely in the back of his cab. Obviously, an avid reader of this column!

I explained that my exotic climes usually come with a cooling breeze, a pool, air-con and an ocean on the doorstep. And a bar.

All the above are patently missing from my current riverside abode in Bath!

I’m a bad sleeper at the best of times, and in order to get the barest minimum of shut-eye, I need cool air streaming through my apnoea mask. Not this dank, foetid apology for fresh air that the current series of heatwaves brings us. My expensive “temperature regulating” sheets cling to me like Caligula’s toga after a particularly active orgy, and my new (online bargain) duvet cover has developed bobbles after just one wash and feels like wet and dry sandpaper next to my sudatory skin.

A friend and fellow sufferer found temporary respite by sitting in her garden in her jim-jams at two in the morning. She said it was wonderfully quiet, relatively cool and the full moon exuded calming rays. She declared it magical and the harbinger of a deep and refreshing sleep. So, I thought I’d try that, and stepping out onto the postage stamp-sized bit of Astroturf that makes up my balcony garden, remembering at the last minute to put on some underpants (factoid: I don’t possess any jim-jams), I found myself bathed in Phoebe’s pale light.

But as I settled into my wicker patio chair, all other similarities ended. In the flats across the river, a raucous lads’ penthouse party had reached the “let’s vomit over the balcony rail” stage. In the adjoining little park, the remnants of a hen night alternated between shrieking and dire renditions of Spice Girls’ hits. Under the bridge, the drug dealers were having their usual arguments with their clients, while an inebriated young woman was giving us her full West End musical theatre repertoire, while teetering dangerously on the river’s edge. All this to the accompaniment of at least a hundred screeching gulls.

Despite the cacophony I must have nodded off, and when I awoke, the party had ceased, the hens had headed off to their roosts and the gulls were reduced to a faint murmur on a distant rooftop. All was silent, the moon had shifted around and was reflecting off the ripples on the river below, revealing the bobbing head of an otter pootling by. There was a soft splash as a silvery fish briefly broke surface. A potential late-night snack for Mr or Mrs Otter perhaps.

It was indeed magical. And so, with a calmness in my heart and the imprint of my wicker chair on my bum, I crept back to bed and slept like the proverbial log.