Sometimes Insomnia can be a good thing

Storms lashed us from the west and south-west. The Atlantic did not like us last night and decided to show our tiny collection of houses clinging onto the edge of west Wales a thing or two.

I led in bed, the rain slashing across my window, not being able to sleep, hoping that the Outhouse Roof I had fixed yesterday was still in one piece and not somewhere over Ireland by now.

OccassionallyI'd gawp at the radioactive dials of my megabell Chinese alarm clock. No amount of self-fulfillment could help me drop off, so I got up and started reading.

I've had the Charles Willeford omnibus (Pick-Up, Burnt Orange Heresy, Cock-Fighter) in my possession for the last four years, but I had only ever read one of his previous novellas 'Kiss your Ass Goodbye', which is excellent hard-boiled neo-noir stuff.

So I started reading and lost myself in the spare functional words, grim lives, stained linoleum.

Next thing I know I'd read one hundred pages of complete immersion and then I went to sleep and into my own 'Live All Girl Revue Mabinogion!'. Marvellous.

And then I thought of Paris again, the view from the Sacre-Coeur, world-famous, thronged by tourists and looky-looky men alike, it still inspires action in me.

http://www.sacre-coeur-montmartre.com/

And then I started writing. A Treatment for an idea which has become much more than that, a strange movie that goes back to a theme that I can't seem to shake, one of FATE, Destiny.

Almost every script that I've ever written has in some way dealt with fate, even, or especially the comedies.

Fate is the hammer that strikes the bell, a displacement of unsettled ideas, a collection of fragments, something unknown that knows us.