A few nights ago I was woken by a girl, shouting in accentless english: "Mummy, is Daddy OK ?". Unusual for the early hours to say the least. Where I live, shattered, broken sleep is usually the consequence of people fighting in the street, with everything that brings in it's slipstream: the sirens, the flashing lights, someone sobbing.

But this was the first time, I'd been woken like this. If this was what I actually heard; the more I think about it now, I suspect that random question only stayed memorable because it's survived as a rare remnant of a dream, the last memory of a good night's sleep, preserved like those insects held in amber, before being wrenched out of dreamtime by screeching, drunken voices. Real ones, sadly.