Experiments in style: reverse order

What difference does starting at the end make?

One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. A full exposition and explanation are given here:

Experimenting with styles

In today’s experiment I’d like to tell the story backwards. First, though, here is the original text on which these experiments or transformations are based:

The original (template) text

In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.

The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.

The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.

An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.

The backwards version

Illustration by Dall-E

Thank goodness for that, I thought to myself when I emerged from the hospital. It was already twilight, so I’d already lost a lot of writing time, but at least I’d read nearly a fifth of my book. What’s more, as I’d been diagnosed with only mild concussion and told to take it easy for a week or two, I knew that I’d be able to get some work done the next day.

I have to say, I was very relieved to have escaped, so to speak. I don’t like hospitals at the best of times, but this was during the worst days of the Covid pandemic. There was no social distancing going on, and most people were wearing their masks around their chins. Fortunately, I’d only had to wait an hour or so to be seen rather than the standard nine hours. Presumably that was because I’d had a head injury.

Head injury? Yes. And I’d love to be able to tell you that I received it while fighting off a horde of muggers or rescuing a beautiful young lady. Unfortunately, I can claim no heroics. The simple truth is that I got out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and didn’t turn the light on. Being half-asleep and therefore disoriented, I leapt out of bed on the wrong side, and ploughed straight into a wall — head first. No wonder I ended up with nausea and headaches for a few days afterwards. Now I wished I’d trotted along to the hospital sooner rather than dithering for a few days.

Still, all’s well that ends well.

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I’d love to know what you think of this version.

Index of versions. For the full experience, upgrade to paid and gain access to the older archived versions and to Experiments in Style Extra for inside information about how I did some of the versions.