1995
No silence is ever total. Here in this hotel room, the quiet is thicker and the underlying noises more muted than the swoosh of the sea and the whine and whack of building work that was my soundtrack for the summer. Here it's corridor voices, wheels whirring over carpet, tea trays tinkling and, outside the window, the rattle and drone of Dublin traffic, muffled by double glazing. Beneath it all, the subterranean creaks and gurgles of a huge central-heating system. The air here is thicker too than the open air of my shed, lined with lemon polish and carpet dust and a trace, despite the cleaners' best efforts, of other people.
I wonder about them, all the others who have slept in here, the business travellers and holidaymakers, as I lie between my laundered linen sheets, trying to per
