Great White Hippo

“Christ, what was that?”

I’m startled awake and blindingly look around, trying to get my bearings. There is a crack of light filtering in through the window so I know it’s early morning. I realise I’m in Uganda, in a safari lodge, and Gwen is sitting bolt upright beneath her mosquito net in the bed beside me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, trying to sound like I give a shit.

She’s making funny noises and it takes me a minute to work out that she’s trying to stifle laughter.

“What is it?” I ask, getting impatient now. Feck it, waking me up because she’s thought of a good joke?  This had better be good.

“It’s nothing,” she giggles. “Nothing really. It’s just that……”

She’s really laughing now; she can’t get the words out for all the guffawing.

“I heard this really weird noise. Really loud.”

More giggling. She’s getting on my nerves now.

“So, I heard this noise,” she resumes, “and it was really loud, right by the window. I thought it was the hippos coming up from the water.”

Another pause. Christ, how long till the punchline?

“I wasn’t scared!” she protests way too loudly.

Yeah, right. She wouldn’t go to the loo last night because there was a caterpillar on the floor.  A caterpillar! Ok, it was a big one, actually a feckin massive one, but still, nothing like the size of a hippo.

“So I was going to get up and take a photo.  God, it’d be amazing to get one so close wouldn’t it?  But then….”

She’s giggling, almost hiccoughing with laughter now. “Then I realised, it wasn’t a hippo, it was, ah Jesus Marian, it was you….snoring!”

I look at her in disgust and lie back on my side, giving as loud a sound of dismissal as I can muster.  It’s really hard to find a decent room mate these days.

Ok, so I snore.  Big deal. Miriam farts. Gwen’s scared of caterpillars.  So what? And anyway, I can’t snore that much. I’m an insomniac. I am, its official! Whatever the official definition of an insomniac is, that’s me.  Less than four hours unbroken sleep a night, or something like that.  That’s my routine. I do sometimes get more than that, but only with medicinal help – sometimes prescribed, sometimes not.    

But I’m wrecked tonight. We were up at 5.30 for the safari, and were in that hot bus for hours, watching for wildlife, squabbling over who would sit next to Joseph, watching Gwen and Ciaran vie for the Amateur Attenborough of the Year Award. (The jury’s still out on that one, although I think Gwen pipped him at the post with her ‘instinct’ about where the lions would be.  Ciaran was good, but men just don’t have instincts).

So yeah, I probably was snoring.  A bit. But so would you if you’d had a long day like that, and were an officially diagnosed insomniac who had obediently taken her medication, and then just to be sure to be sure, had a few glasses of wine with dinner, and a couple of those rather nice Nile beers after. Just to be sociable.

When we got back from the safari, it was lunchtime. We were all starving and parched, our bottles of water having run out long ago.  The plan was to have a hurried lunch and then head back to the river for a water tour, which promised sightings of crocodiles and water monitors, and up close encounters with elephants. But once we settle at the table, some of us begin to flag, and tentatively voice our reservations about the pace of activity, preferring to contemplate a more leisurely afternoon.  So whilst Claire and Mir head off with Joseph to catch the river Boat, Gwen heads to our lodge with her book, Ciaran takes himself for a gentle stroll, and I settle on a comfy couch at the bar with my kindle and a beer. The warm sunshine; the sound of the lake lapping against the shore; the lulling effects of the African beer, and the inevitable lethargy following an early start, soon result in the kindle slipping form my hand, me curling up on the sofa and drifting into a gentle doze with the sun on my skin.  I reflect on summer siestas of a different kind, and work hard to put them out of my mind, and to focus instead on the beauty and calm of a Ugandan afternoon. I drift into sleep and am not sure how long I’ve been here when I suddenly wake, startled by a loud noise. Its close by. Feck it, those bloody hippos again