Displaced in Mullingar:night terrors and midsummer madness have Michael Hardinghigh-tailing it to Co Mayo for some peace and quiet.

Midsummer makes me mad. I talk in my sleep, or I have disturbing dreams, or I encounter spirits from Cupid's realm, masked in human form.

Last week I dreamed of being an actor, waiting to perform. Just before the show began I stood behind the audience, watching them through a glass wall.

I was anxious. I had a long speech to recite, which I had not learned very well, and the director had indicated that I should sing it.

I woke up with fright, to realise it was the middle of the night. So I had a glass of water, and lay back on the pillow, only to be ambushed once more. In the second dream I had an urge to use the toilet, minutes before I was required on stage.

The rest of the dream would be too much information to record, even in a diary. The following morning I went through my usual rituals without remembering the dreams. I made breakfast, strolled around town, had a coffee, phoned a Polish friend to see if he'd be free for fun next week, and had a chat with an old man in the vegetable shop, about the Coliseum Cinema.

The Coliseum once stood on the corner of Dominick Street. The lady who played the piano there, to accompany the silent antics of Charlie Chaplin, still lives in Mullingar, though the beautiful old cinema was demolished long ago.

In the afternoon my jeep was parked where the Coliseum once stood, when a Nissan Micra pulled in behind me. The driver, an Indian woman, asked me for directions to the hospital. She was wearing a nurse's uniform and the moment felt like a scene in a movie.

I told her that the roundabouts in Mullingar were tricky, but if she followed me, I would lead her - zigzag - across town, to the address she wanted.

So off we went; me heroic, in my shining black Pajero, and she, in the little Nissan on my tail.

Halfway through town, I indicated left, at a junction, but she indicated right. I saw her terrified face through the car window as she moved into the lane beside me. The moment felt like a horror movie, as she drove away through the backstreets of Mullingar alone.

I suppose Mullingar has an underbelly. And the young woman probably got suspicious about where I was leading her. Then, in an instant, she decided to go her own way. Her last glance in my direction was as edgy as if I had been leading her into the heart of darkness.

THAT NIGHT STEVE Wickham was performing with his band, No Crows, in Mullingar. Before the gig he came round to my apartment, and we drank tea and ate marshmallows. He was wearing

a polka-dot shirt; white spots on a wine-red background.

At the gig later, a sudden recollection almost knocked me off the high-stool; in my dream, I too had been wearing a red polka-dot shirt.

Then I saw a young man at the bar. He was not engaged with the music.

And his face reminded me of a woman I met recently in Newfoundland.

There was something androgynous and graceful in his brow and cheeks.

"How-zit goin'," I said.

He turned and looked at me with such sorrow, and such loneliness, that I could not bear to converse further with him, for fear of being trivial.

Behind sorrow there is only more sorrow. All other emotions can be masks for sorrow; but sorrow is naked. So said Oscar Wilde.

I walked home alone after the gig, through moonlit streets, and told myself that the disturbing dreams and strange encounters were all psychic reverberations of midsummer, when love turns up in unexpected masks.

Maybe a psychiatrist would put me on tablets. But thankfully, I don't hang out with many psychiatrists.

I'm susceptible to signs and portents. On Wednesday I saw a dead fish on the banks of the canal. It flattened me emotionally.

I went back the following day, hoping for a blackbird. But all I found was the half-eaten fish. Only the tail fin remained beneath a mountain of feasting blue bottles.

"Enough!" I said, to the mirror. "Midsummer is not a time to be stuck in Mullingar! The sea beckons!" I pointed my beautiful Pajero towards the plains of Co Mayo, and did not spare the tyres until I saw the broad Atlantic. On Saturday I climbed half way up the Reek, and gazed into the vivid blue of the bay.