Tom Waites: 'Hold On'

Some years ago, when TMG and I lived in Berwick-upon-Tweed, I played this while consuming a considerable quantity of neat Plymouth gin, probably tinted with Angosturra Bitters - for years we were never without a bottle (those were the days), and, as is my habit still when in my cups, I put the track on endless play and worked my way doggedly towards oblivion. I recall, clearly, before I passed out, replying in like kind to the neighbour angrily banging on the wall, though which one in that jumbled mediaeval close I knew not. At some point TMG, perceiving that I had subsided into blissful unconsciousness and determined to succumb to the sleep spirits that tormented her, broke in to switch off the music. Had she not asked the following morning I might still be completely unaware that in pushing, with difficulty, the door open she twisted my neck through perhaps one hundred and twenty degrees, making frightening grinding and cracking sounds as she did so. It says something for her resolve, and that of most women, that she left me senseless there and went back to bed, there subsequently to enjoy an undisturbed night.