The witching hour
It’s 2.48 in the morning- officially the worst of times to wake up. There’s just too much night left, an endless tunnel of darkness to crawl through until you glimpse the first chink of light. Waking at 4 or 5am is alright, comforting even. Light looms at 4.30am - the day is just around the bend. Realistically it wouldn’t be that weird if you got up. And so, with no pressure to find sleep again, I always do. But nearly 3 is not ok.
According to folklore, it’s the witching hour - the demonic, freaky patch of night time - a time for the occult, for twisted rituals and blood-curdling exorcisms. According to science, it’s about circadian rhythms; we’re in REM sleep so suddenly waking up at this time makes you feel particularly discombobulated. Either way, I’m wide awake and I don’t like it. A sudden thought enters my head with no warning. Or maybe it was there before I awoke, tickling the edges of my unconscious mind:
Where is my forest green jumper?
The one I love from & Other Stories. The one that has to be washed on a cold wash. It’s sort of a fisherman knit with extra long paper bag sleeves. I bought it for £40 in the sale. Now that I think of it in the suffocating darkness of 2.50am, I haven’t seen it for months. Sure it’s been an interminably long summer, but I’ve seen my other jumpers - so where is this one? I bet my husband washed it on 40, shrunk it, and hid the evidence. That’s what he did to my other favourite jumper (also dark green) a couple of years ago. He didn’t hide it, but he did shrink it. He shrunk it so small that it fitted our then five year old daughter. God I loved that jumper. It was probably my favourite jumper of all time. I’d describe it but it’s too painful. Of all the jumpers he could have shrunk, why did he have to shrink THAT jumper? And now he’s done it again. But this time he’s covered his tracks. It’s the perfect crime - or so he thinks. It’s only a theory, I know, but I’m too worked up to try to get back to sleep. And what about that chicken in the fridge? When does it go off? I can never get the chicken thing right. I either buy too much or too little. And should we have let our children watch Stardust? I think it was definitely a mistake. It was much more violent than I remembered. How many years until they leave home and go to university? The final straw. My heart’s pounding now, so I get up.
I open the door. It creaks - of course it bloody creaks. It doesn’t creak in the middle of the day, but now: creak city. Why is it so light on the landing? I look up at the skylight window. An obscene moon looks back. Fat and perfectly round, it’s the fullest of full moons. Maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling so deranged, so emotional, so unhinged. Not that I believe in any of that stuff but still. I look at the number 3 tattooed on my foot, an indelible remnant of my brief but intense affair with numerology. I’m a pure 3, if you want to know. I had the books and everything. There was a time when I did tarot cards and knew what rising sign I was. Now look at me. Not a whiff of woo woo, not a hint of witchiness. There ain’t no patchouli here. What happened?
Did I just wake up one day and think it was a load of old bollocks or did it happen slowly, like everything else? I think about that line in The Breakfast Club, the one that comes back to me now and then: When you grow up, your heart dies. Sure, it's on the nose, but isn’t it true?
At 19 you're in search of magic, mystery, spiritualism. And so, you find it, in some form or another. You care. You care so much. About injustice, about inequality. You call people out, you argue vociferously with anyone who'll listen - about redistributing global wealth, about the vulgarity of excess, about tearing it all down and starting again. At 20 I’d cut my apple in half and give the slightly larger half away, but now, now that I have more to give? You can have a slice, sure, but I’m a capitalist babes and that's how it is.
At 21 my political ideals were pretty much Marxist. And now? In the words of John Bender, I’m a ‘neo (capitalist) maxi zoon dweebie’. I like Tony Blair and candles with lids. I browse designer handbags and have a wishlist full of jewellery I don’t need. I believe in a ‘middle ground’, whatever the hell that means - somewhere between abject horror and utopia, I guess. I give less money to charity than I did twenty years ago - a time when I regularly had to ask the person at the till to unbleep some of the food she’d just bleeped through because I didn’t have enough money in my account. The other day in Tesco, I said to my daughter: “It’s so annoying, they haven’t got any nduja - we’ll have to go to Waitrose for that”. Who am I? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not beating up homeless people or voting Tory - nothing like that. But I do think about the taste of the wine I’m drinking more than I’d like to.
Where’s the magic gone? Did I trade it for deliciously expensive sausage? I mean, I know the two aren’t mutually exclusive but. They also are, kind of.
“It’s unavoidable”, she says, stony faced, “When you grow up, your heart dies.”
When did I stop looking for the unseen, for the mystical, for the little sprinkles of umami that were once so moreish? Maybe I never truly believed in any of these things, but I wanted to - and that’s the thing. At 23, my first thought wasn’t “poppycock”. I didn’t do an internal eye roll when someone started talking about horoscopes or chakras. I was an open flower, facing the sun, drinking in the light, bathing in possibility. Now I’m one step away from swinging a riding crop at ‘hippies’. Oh my god. I’m basically Priti Patel - or Petunia Dursley. Oh my Christ- I’m a muggle! I have no soul, no anima. What next? Maybe I secretly want to buy The Times, who knows.
I look at the moon and think about howling. I used to walk the streets of North London without any shoes on. Sure, it was pretentious as hell, but what freedom! Not a thought about hepatitis or what anyone else might think. I just wanted to feel the ground beneath my feet. It was pure, unadulterated whimsy - a happy side effect of being open to life, to wonderment, to everything.
I skived off drama school one afternoon with my friend, Stephanie. We had a few drinks in Camden and got tattoos on our feet. I look at it again. A little 3 inside a pyramid. Because I loved numerology and ancient Egypt. Maybe I’ll get back into all that ‘stuff’. But first I need to find my jumper - if he’s shrunk it, I am going to lose the plot.
