Barking and Dogenham

The usual bedtime seems to have settled around 10.30pm......after an exhausting day lying on the sun loungers, listening to the lapping of the Arabian Sea, there's not much left in the tank, frankly.

I turn on my ceiling fan, which has four speeds.....setting number two suffices at this time of year. I put on my pyjamas, more for protection against mosquitoes than for any other reason, and draw the white sheet over my gently sweating form.....it looks like a scene from Waking The Dead.

I turn off the light and close my eyes....there's a kerfuffle on the tiled roof above my head as the jackdaws begin to roost for the night. Their cawing is stark and loud, and they seem to be vying with eachother to see who can make the most noise. They are joined by a strange whooping sound....at first I assume it's a monkey, it sounds so bizarre.....but there are no monkeys here. It must be some kind of bird. I imagine it having a beak like a series of fluted trumpets, and a huge puffed up breast that it exercises in letting out it's disturbing shriek.

As I turn over, I hear James in the adjacent bedroom....he has the beginnings of a chest infection, and his cough is deep and gutteral. Scratchy, the neighbour's friendly mongrel, begins to bark in seeming reply. His barking soon transmits itself to the dogs next door, and before long there are dozens of them locked in an unholy chorale. In the far distance of the night I swear I can hear a wolf orchestrating the proceedings.

I stuff a pair of ear plugs into the sides of my head, and try to nod off. Just as sleep seems about to envelop me, I hear the distinctive whine of a dive-bombing mosquito. It seems to have honed in ignorantly on one of my ear plugs. I swat at it blindly in the darkness, turn on the bedside lamp, and grope in my baggage for my supply of insect-reppellant. I smear the stinking stuff over my exposed areas of flesh, and hunker down once more under my shroud.

By 2am, the canine chorus has begun to run out of ideas, and I begin to drift into deep sleep. It is then that I hear a scratching sound, a creaking that comes in short sharp bursts, so fast it puts me in mind of the rattle of a rattle-snake. It comes in three second waves, four or five at a time, then a period of silence. I involuntarily curl my feet towards my buttocks and adopt a foetal position, bracing myself for the poisonous strike. After half-an-hour I pluck up the courage to turn on the light and get out of bed. It seems to be coming from the little window....so at first I assume it's something outside trying to scratch it's way in. But I can see nothing through the mosquito gauze. My suitcase lies atop a small two-drawer table nearby....has something crawled it's way into my luggage? I stare in that direction for a long time, but there's no sign of movement. Eventually, I put it down to the expansion of the wooden rafters in the heat.

I push my ear plugs in a bit futher, and eventually nod off.

I am woken by the crowing of the neighbour's rooster, vowing to wring it's neck should our paths ever cross.....soon the jackdaws have woken up too, cawing at eachother like demented babies.

Over a mug of tea the following morning, I explain to my housemates that I was kept awake by (among other things), a sinister scratching noise during the night....."Ahhh, the haunted table", comes the knowing reply. Apparently, the previous occupant of my room was so disturbed by the mysterious scratching that she dismantled the table in a vain attempt to solve the mystery. And so the story of the Haunted Table passes into legend....perhaps I could sell the idea to IKEA!?