The people I was with had gone to play pool. I don’t really play pool so I guess I wasn’t with anyone at that point. I’d just asked what time the bar closed and everyone had laughed at my expression when they told me 5:30AM. “That just doesn’t happen back home” I said. They seemed pleased at my implicit flattery of their country.

I made my way across the spacious, near-empty wooden floor towards the toilets, feeling charming and invincible. I noticed a girl moving carefully away from the bar with a drink in her hand. She had a mop of blonde frizzy hair in an unfashionable but not ugly style, and wore a white blouse and beige plaid pleated skirt. Her face was hidden by her hair as she focussed on not spilling her drink. Her skirt was of the type that would normally render me unable to speak to a girl, but something in her demeanour spelled “geek” and I was intrigued by the counterpoint. I’m still not sure whether it was courage or instinct or blind foolishness that kicked it off, but as our paths met I stopped her by her hips: gently, unambiguously, but not invasively, like I might lead a salsa partner.

Oh shit I thought. I’ve started something.

She looked up.

“Sorry,” I said.

Oh shit. An excruciatingly long 2.2853 seconds passed

My stage experience told me nothing can hurt you while you maintain composure.

“It’s a bit crowded in here” i offered, a blatant lie.

I made a show of not being able to figure out which way to go, like when two strangers passing on a path both step the same way, then correct, then correct, ending up face to face and apologetic. I squeezed past, apologetic, despite the apparent acres of space around us, and continued toward the toilet, chuckling that I’d been both stupid enough to get in the situation and smart enough to get out of it with a story to tell.

As I approached the door that divided the two bars, I became aware of a movement at my elbow. She was following me, catching up. Strewth! As we approached the door I was drawing a blank as to what one ought to do in these situations. I slowed to allow her to draw alongside. In single file we’d fit through the door perfectly, but where was the fun in that?

She slipped one foot past me, slightly tripping me. As I mock-stumbled I gently barged shoulders, apologising and making a big show of being mortified to have been so clumsy. Having shoved slightly in front of her, I stepped back and gave a slight bow - “After You” - and then neatly stepped alongside as she headed through the narrow doorway. After much apologising and suppressed hysteria on both sides, we were half way through the door, and to any onlooker would have seemed hopelessly wedged, every defensible border gently transgressed, both parties seemingly trying to extricate themselves from the mess.

Then I woke up.

Dang!

I don’t know if you get this on waking, but I tend to remember my dreams in reverse order. I remembered arriving at the bar after hitching a lift in the kiddy trailer of some tandem cyclists after having started my journey in a 1927 Bugatti and, in order to get it to go faster, having transformed it slowly into a ferrari-red rubber jumpsuit that, though it went faster and faster the more I straightened my flying body and lost bits of car, turned out not to be a vehicle and thus was absolutely useless for locomotion the moment I stopped at a T junction. On arrival at the bar, in the middle of the day, the tandem cyclists were in fact a family of young chavs who I struggled to get along with. I wish dreams had better continuity. They always contain scenes that would be really good if they made any sense, but fall way short of being screenplays.