Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
Apologies if there is anyone who religiously waits for these Dollops to be released everyday, only to be disappointed when a Dollop comes in a couple of hours late. The reason for today’s late arrival is due to Katherine, who has read every single Dollop and has commented on a great deal of them. She was at Sidmouth Festival, where we perfomrered today, and we got chatting, and before I knew it, it was half past twelve. I felt that, given that she has listened or read, or even apparently often listened and read every single Dollop, this should excuse me from feeling too guilty that the Dollop was late. I suppose in a way, she was getting her own personal Dollop, although a part of me was wondering whether she was disappointed with the physically present me, maybe thinking, “he’s not as interesting when you actually meet him in real-life; in fact, he’s rather dull. He hasn’t even mentioned his kettle once” I wondered if she was constantly comparing me to the other David Eagle, David Eagle the Dolloper. “What is he going on about? The Dolloping David Eagle wouldn’t have said something so stupid.”
Currently, the physically present me is an absolute wreck. I have had approximately 7 hours sleep in the last 80 hours. I WAS feel tired but I am just unable to sleep. Eventually I managed to fall asleep at 6am, but at 8 my alarm was going off. It was time to set off for Sidmouth Festival. Even though I knew it wouldn’t serve any purpose at all, my brain was screaming out for me to hit the snooze button, giving me an extra six minutes in bed. If I didn’t hit snooze then I would have to get up immediately, as I knew that staying in bed for another six minutes would result in me falling asleep again. I’d spent 6 hours lying in bed, praying for sleep to come, and now, ironically – and yes Alanis , this is the correct use of the term “ironic” – my body and brain was desperate to go back to sleep, the prospect of getting up made me want to cry. My head was aching and everything felt heavy. There was no time to snooze, I needed to get up now, and so I chose not to use the snooze option.
The next thing I was aware of was the sound of my phone ring tone. Shit! I should have pressed the snooze button. I had presumably lost the fight to get out of bed, and without the snooze alarm waking me, I had been allowed to fall into a deep sleep. How long had I been asleep for? This was clearly Sean calling to find out where I was.
I answered the phone, putting it on speaker so as to quickly get dressed while he spoke, in order to try and get out of the house as quickly as possible. Just how late was I. I jumped out of bed and threw a shirt over my head. I heard Sean’s voice coming over the phone’s speaker. Unfortunately I couldn’t make out what he was saying because of the sound of my shirt rustling against my ears as I desperately tried to quickly pull it on, which resulted in me getting the sleeves tangled, and taking mic taking longer than the second it should have taken. I was clearly ridiculously tired, because I was really struggling to get this shirt on. My arms were now poking through a gap in between the buttons. And all the while, Sean was talking, probably wondering where I an. I was in a massive tangle inside the shirt, and if I kept trying to get out of this fabric maze, I would completely miss what Sean was saying, which would make him even more annoyed than he surely already was, for I dreaded to think how long I’d overslept for. So I left the shirt to dangle abserdly over my head while I tried to make out what Sean was saying.
He had received a call from someone from Gatwick airport saying that the accordion and the guitar had been found, and that they could get them to Sheffield for 930. The original plan had been to allow plenty of time to get to Sidmouth, perhaps managing to cram in a couple of hours of sleep when we got there – Sean had hardly slept the day before either – but now we had to wait for the missing instruments to be delivered. It appeared that I hadn’t really gone back to sleep, because it was only five minutes past eight. After condluding the call with Sean, I untangled the shirt and tried to wake myself up with a cold shower. I was so tired that I felt as if I was going to be physically sick. I chose a cold shower because I feared that I’d fall asleep if it was a hot shower.
Even though today’s Dollop is clearly unfinished and very shambolically written, I am going to leave it here, as I keep falling asleep at the computer and then waking up a few seconds later,. I shall continue from where we left off tomorrow. I will have to publish this now, before I completely crash out, slump over the computer and properly fall asleep.
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