The hot bitter liquid slides down my
throat, bitter and perfect. Coffee, reawakening my body as it moves. I can feel
the sluggish red blood in my veins waking, the caffeine is setting it alight,
jump starting it with a new form of lightening, pushing it through narrow
channels, slow flowing life. Mornings have never been my living hours, I have
more memories greeting them from the other side of dawn, I am a nighttime
person, always have been. Even as a child I knew night better than morning. My
father is a rock musician and as a child I would lay awake waiting for the
noise of his car arriving home. I had a unique paranoia; I couldn’t sleep until
I knew where all of my family were; safely at home, sleeping soundly, then rest
for me.
My teenage years brought a new companion
for insomnia: books. It was the same for my mother and my brothers. I shared a
bedroom with one or both of my brothers for most of my childhood, so the
practice of keeping torches under the pillow to be pulled out for under the doona,
illicit nighttime reading was a silently acknowledged practice for all of us.
Crawling into bed, Mum and Dad would come and tuck us in, say our prayers, off
with the lights and goodnight. Then the doors would close and the torches would
come out, doonas pulled up over heads and the nighttime adventures commenced.
Mornings meant the arrival of our parents whipping doonas off sleeping children
to coax us out. They could hardly blame us; it’s the price you pay for
encouraging your kids to read.
My nighttime literary adventures morphed
into various typical teenage pursuits, and eventually I began working in
hospitality. Restaurant and bar work agreed with me in more ways than one. I
was raised to appreciate food, and later I was taught to appreciate good wine
and beer… thanks to my exceptional mother. Later, in my overseas life, my work
in hospitality became my social network. My time working in bars in the U.K.
led to the formation of my overseas family. I
spent Christmas with my colleagues and bar mates, playing Trivial Pursuit through the night drinking Amaretto, fondest memories were often found in the grey lit hours.
It wasn’t unusual for a group of us to finish work at three or four a.m. and
then take to our social lives through the early morning hours. I knew London
better in the pre-dawn hours than any other.
Upon my homecoming, my nighttime hours were
spent in solitude until I began my university degree. Now my nighttime hours
are my working hours, my closest friends at university are the people who can’t
work in the hubbub of the daytime oriented students. This old building at night
contains a special form of solace. Every now and then people will ask me if
it’s creepy in this old fortress in the deep hours of the night; to me it
isn’t. Convicts built this building; its history is as deep as that of any of
Australia’s oldest buildings. Some people say ghosts roam about here, but I’ve
never met one. It happens that some of my closest friendships were forged here
in the middle hours and none of them were with ghosts.
This place has been my home for three years; there’s
nothing in this building that I could be afraid of, but then few people take so
much note of the reality of a building as they do of the spooky stories of
sensationalist ghost enthusiasts. While I have nothing against a good scary
story, I don’t need people assuming I spend my nights surrounded by the
dissatisfied dead.
I’ll be leaving this cranky-old-man
building soon. No more sitting on the step outside reviving myself with hot
coffee, no more late night pool tournaments and no more greeting the cleaner as
she arrives at six-thirty in the morning. I’m afraid I will be finding a new
nighttime abode, and I am concerned that it won’t be nearly as friendly as this
one. But for now I will sit on the step and light my veins with caffeine. Soon enough the night will arrive and my blood will be suitably charged to move my brain again.
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