The Roman Banquet

I hate it when I have to get up early.

What little dream I had was lavish. The setting was a traditional Roman house, with an open courtyard, crescent benches of marble situated among peach and pomegranate trees, a central fountain, what looked like canaries - the green ones with grey wings, not the inbred yellow ones - and a small shrine for the household gods and ancestors, with candles and incense kept burning.

There was a ewer at my feet, filled with oil, and I was awaiting a slave to come along and anoint my feet with the scented oil. I was curious to see what her reaction would have been to have seen my right foot - I'd been called "Saturn-footed" before, it seemed - and I'd been entertained by household slaves playing a lyre and some sort of woodwind instrument.

The table was being set up for a banquet. I was wondering what they were going to serve, probably a steady stream of exotic meat dishes and frequent trips to the vomitorium to puke it all up whilst being entertained by a never-ending stream of prostitutes, when the damned alarm went off and I had to get up and get to the Museum for the tour.