OFTEN, I wake up in the night in this unfamiliar room and for a minute or two have no idea where I am and feel momentarily a little disconcerted and even frightened.

Everything seems slanted from my eye view but slowly makes sense as it reveals itself as my brain catches up.

Yes, that’s the wardrobe; there, the open door and its black tunnel slowly clears to reveal the corridor; and bit by bit my eyes take in the accoutrements of hospital life.

There’s my wheelchair. Placed across another chair, my crutches. The Zimmer is to the side of my single bed across from the unmistakeable ugly shape of the night-time commode.

Now that my brace is off during the night, I may only take a few paces, certainly not the ‘strides’ to the bathroom.

I reach into the hidden spot where I keep my e-cig. I’m sure ‘they’ know but so long as I don’t ostentatiously wave the now-forbidden object, I can pacify myself with my nicotine hit.

And all passes.

That disconcerting low-level fear is no longer though contained to the night.

For now, the real world, the material world, is as slanted and disturbing as anything I struggle to make sense of in those early hours.

Every day brings a fresh, once unimaginable horror: A war cabinet meets in Downing Street; plans are discussed for military rule and curfews in the event of potential rioting; planes will fly in trucks loaded with food and medicine; any ‘wanted’ immigrants will still have to earn £36,000 plus before being given entry privileges; a secret list of businesses to be helped by huge hand-outs to keep them going exists – on and on it goes.

To sweeten the mix, Boris Johnson and his warship of fools start each week with a new fantasy list of millions to be given to police, hospitals, prison services.

None stand up to close scrutiny being sleight of hand bookkeeping manoeuvres which are unlikely to see the light of day with an undoubtedly-coming general election.

Only one thing is certain – billions and billions have been, and are being spent, on shoring up the insanity that has infected a once sober Parliament.

We may not have agreed with many decisions taken in Government but always there was an Opposition to speak for us. Ah yes, remember the official Opposition?

Always, barring one or two notable exceptions, there was a logic in their progress through the Palace of Westminster.

Now, sniggering schoolboys talk in terms of a war in which they never fought, of a generation they never knew, and shame the Mother of Parliaments by threatening a lock-in.

They justify their defiance by the tiresome ‘will of the people,’ ‘democratic vote’ bullshit they spout in soundbites as if we’re all too stupid to see through their game.

And at the heart of this grotesque dismantling of carefully constructed democracy is a lying, cheating opportunist who cares ultimately for nothing and nobody but himself.

Yes, the smirk of superiority rarely plays on this PM’s face anymore as all his bluffs are called but he marches on buffered by those equally blinded by power and personal ambition.

In the manner of his new telephone confidant, the equally repulsive Donald Trump, he avoids most contact with the public, dodges interviews, and has taken to punctuating his set speeches with the clenched, punching fists of a petty dictator.

There are so many strings pulling him it is a wonder he can still walk without the knee jerks of the marionette he increasingly resembles.

On the streets of England, given a nod to behave as they want as the drawbridge comes down on the un-pure, the bully boys and girls (some in smart suits) boil with a dredged-up hatred from racist depths now erupting in geyser gushes.

And we wonder, should we still believe, indeed count on, the decency and steadfast approach of those few good remaining men and women fighting a rear-guard action in the Palace and the courts?

The millions who’ve marched to demand another referendum have not been heeded by their representatives and certainly not by the other puppet Jeremy Corbyn hiding in his allotment awaiting orders from his own cabal.

The millions who voted remain are rarely, if ever, mentioned, as if air-brushed from this disgraceful episode in history.

Targeted ads, the playground of the right and their dodgy money, are once again on Facebook in preparation for another assault on this beloved democracy of theirs.

Old colonial swagger has replaced the hard-won details of the Good Friday Agreement, cemented in place by the blood of men, women and children.

Insults have replaced diplomacy as the War Cabinet glory in their do or die stance in front of a disbelieving, head-shaking world. They are not admired, merely pitied for their infantile, ignorant posturing.

Ah but ‘the people.’

They’re to be thrown their thirty pieces of silver in the form of Chancellor Sajid Javid’s ludicrous 50p with the non-ironic words: Friendship with All Nations.

When I next awake in the early hours, unsure and uncertain where I am, I’ll repeat to myself: 'This is the real world. This is the real world. The other was just a bad dream.’