Watercolour dreamcatcher with feathers

You will not believe what Mrs Okafor hung over the cloakroom door at the Palais on Saturday. It is a hoop no bigger than a side plate, dark wood worn smooth by years of thumbs, strung with a web so fine you only see it when the lamps catch it. Three feathers hang from the bottom, teal and turquoise at the tips, fading to ink where they meet the cord. Her father made it in Lagos from wire and gull feathers he picked up off the sea wall, and she says it catches the bad dreams so the good ones can get through the middle. I told her the middle was where the band played, and she laughed so hard she had to sit on the stairs.

The band are nothing special, but Eddie Lusk on trumpet can make a slow foxtrot sound like rain on a tin roof. Last month a splash of pink paint from the decorators landed on the wall behind the stage and nobody would scrub it off, so now the whole room seems to glow a little when the spotlight swings round. The lads from the docks come in wearing their good jackets and stand by the pillars pretending not to watch the girls from the laundry. Every time the floor shakes under the Charleston, the feathers swing and tick against the wood like a clock that has forgotten what time it is.

On Saturday a sailor who had been drinking since noon asked Mrs Okafor to take it down, saying it was bad luck to hang anything that dangles over a door. She didn't argue. She just reached up, unhooked it, and pressed it into his hands. He stood there turning it over for a long time, and when the music stopped he was still holding it, looking through the web at the lights.

Write back soon and tell me about Mum's hip.

Love, Nell