To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

It's late. Actually its not that late. It is about Midnight on Wednesday. Cannes runs officially for 3 more days, but all the buyers have left town now, and tomorrow I could fire off a cannon down the Palais De Festivals, and not hit a soul.

It's been a long go of it. Two weeks of festival madness, rude French waiters, crazy French people camped out in the hot sun on the road across from the red carptet on the Palais at 8:00AM, and snotty french people in general.

I haven't slept. Usually I can get a few good hours in whereever I am, be it a hotel room in Winnipeg or the like, but coming to Cannes has been a nightmare sleep-wise. I was staying directly across the street from the Palais which is cool - the apartment is on the 7th floor, and we have a front row view of all the celebs getting out of their limos and going past the papparazo (if you're into that), but with the noise, street cleaning, drunk knuckleheads at 4:00 AM, it was too much for me. I'm here to work. And I can't work with this noise and no sleep.

So my friend Melanie invited me to stay at her place in La Bocca which is on the beach road about 4 kms north of Cannes. A spanky apartment, and directly across the road from some skookum beaches with nothing but the occassional traffic, and the ever present waves from the Mediterranean crashing on the sand.

All was good. Until I had to sleep.

Last night, I ignored the parties and cocktails, and headed to Mel's place and crawled into bed around 11:00 PM. I woke up at 3:15 completely awake. I remained awake for the duration.

I'm tired and stressed out. I have not had more than 4 hours of sleep each night I've been here.

Tonight, I blew off everyone and everything to come back to the apartment and try and get some rest. About 20 minutes ago, Mel called to say that she was coming back, and that we should get a bottle of wine, and go across the street stand in the ocean, and let the the warm waters of the Med wash around us.

I knew there was a reason I liked her.