Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening?
The podcast this week has chapter 5 of Way of the Kip. Now that Reece has the mystical sandalewood candle, will it help him sleep?
Story below for those on Substack - cree.substack.com for those that aren’t
Don’t forget, What We Do When We Can’t Dance - is on 30th May at the King Alfred theatre in London - tickets are free
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/what-we-do-when-we-cant-dance-by-dreamarts-rep-company-tickets-1988164832534
Also,my rap EP and E-Book - Raw 64s of Boredom - is £2
https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/raw64sofboredom
That’s it for this week
Peas and taters
Paul
Way of the Kip - Chapter 5 - Is it
Practically flew off the 159, almost tumbling down the stairs from the top deck. Ran back to the gaff. Up the few steps to the front door: key in, twist, push, close and then straight into my room. Slapped the shopping on the bed, cracked open one of the tins, which fizzed and spilled down my shirt as the pizza box slid onto the floor. Not sure I cared. I just stared at the sandalwood yankee candle- miraculously sat upright - whilst the rest of the shopping was half-spilling out the bag. GONG sound.
Looked at my phone for the time – it was ten past seven. So now what? I had this feeling of excitement, like back in the day, coming home from school with a new computer game. I wanted to rip the cellophane off and plug the candle in and play the thing, right there and then. Figured this feeling of fizziness probably wasn’t ideal if I wanted to tap into the supposed powers of the sandalwood and get a decent nights kip.
I picked it up and sniffed it. It smelled nice. Nice? Clearly I didn’t have a word to describe the smell, I guess the smell was, well, sandalwood. Whatever the hell that was. It certainly smelled decent. Like the occasional whiff you get of a well presented females hair when you’re standing in the lift.
I drained the beer and thought it might be wise to at least make some sort of plan. Eat, chill-out then aim for bed about half-nine. That’ll do. Picked up the shopping, slipped into the kitchen and whacked the oven on – 180% - ten minutes. Oven food temperature and duration was my Mastermind speciality. Pizza? I could sleep-walk that one. Sleep-walk. If only.
I was excited to go to bed. It was an odd feeling. It was odd even thinking it. Who gets excited about sleep? Maybe Bianca? But maybe there was more to it than that? Something deeper? Again, no words. I cracked another tin open and stuck Illmatic on. Again. Just that intro track, into NY state of Mind. Could listen to that over and over. Which I had done, over and over. Sat there and listened to the first few tracks.
Lying on my bed, head-nodding to Half-Time, half damp work shirt strewn across my floor; my mind was replying events from the day again. The training. The telling-off from Priah. Mugging off Bianca then asking Bianca her for advice. Boring Keith. Being screwed by Shaz. The little buddah statue on Bianca’s desk. Her ‘I’m worth it’ routine. The bias and the bigotry rearing its head, in my head. I couldn’t shake the feeling that all of it was linked to sleep? That feeling, like a little niggle from the deep, that perhaps I’d not noticed before. Like standing on Streatham Hill station in the mornings, waiting for my train, sometimes I’d peer down the track until I could see a little square dot; which might be the train but most of the time it was too out of focus to tell. I didn’t know what it was.
How do you even work this stuff out? Old hip hop guys from the 80’s, like KRS-ONE, would go on about knowledge of self. Pretty sure Nas talked about it too. Was this what they were talking about? But what do you do when you can’t understand it? You feel something but you don’t know what it is? Where was the manual for all of this? I had no idea. Just sat there with the niggle and the beer in my hand.
A thought then popped up in my mind, like a little crisp packet appearing in the sky on a windy day, that maybe getting a decent nights sleep was the missing piece on sorting my life out? The solver of all my problems. I chuckled. As if.
I picked up the candle again and wondered if this little red waxy blob was the answer? At the very least, it might help disguise that stale smell that always seemed to be in my room, no matter how much Glade I used.
I stopped short at the second can, even though I had another two left in the pack. Standard procedure was to drink whatever was there. It was a reflex. This time I showed restraint. Well done me. I ate my pizza at 7.30, so it would give me enough time to digest before I decided to call it a night.
Dinner done and a casual bit of Sky Sports News and I was all set. I found an old lighter from my weed days in a Nike shoe box. I placed the candle on a small shelf just above the fire place and lit the thing. Directly above the candle was that Chelsea calendar from the year before, still stuck on October. It was February. That month’s centre-fold was Frank Lampard. With the candle burning below him, and an empty can of Lynch Africa next to it, it looked like a shrine, or I was about to do some Shamanic ritual.
To help me unwind, I did a few stretches, turned the volume down on the music and dimmed the lights. All this effort needed to be worth it. I was worth it, apparently, or was it Bianca? I looked at the candle and took a deep breath.
Climbed into bed. Nine thirty. On time. Well-done me. The sandlewood aroma started to hit my nose. Here we go. This is it, I thought. Like doing a pill, but the opposite, any minute I’m gonna start coming down. I lied there, excited, waiting for the downness to kick in.
Some deep house compilation was playing, one of those I enjoyed but knew none of the names of the songs or the producers or the album. Just some Global Underground thing. I practised some deep breathing, getting good whiffs of that sandlewood, whatever that was, up my nose. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out. Waiting. Waiting for the sleepiness to kick in. Any minute now.
I was feeling the music, a decent tune had kicked in. Noticed my head and feet had started nodding, must be the down, the down is coming, here it comes, it’s coming, any minute now, surely? Surely? Come on. Change the CD. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out. Thoughts whizzing around my brain like rouge firework displays. Remembered that I needed to pay the council tax. Was Tony Dorrigo still playing football? Any minute now…
2am and I was wideawake: laptop screen illuminating my face, hurting my eyes, sound off, tissue at the ready;resorting to the tried and tested. Done what I needed to do. Blew out the candle, climbed back into bed and stared at the ceiling like I did, every night, until I forgot I couldn’t sleep and somehow drifted off. Do one Bianca. None of this was worth it.
