The not very big sleep

I have been a model of organisation this month.  It’s the month of birthdays.  Just in the family, there’s the 2nd, the 5th, the 10th, the 29th and the 30th.  And there’s a wedding anniversary on the 12th.  And my schoolfriend’s on the 24th.

Presents have been bought and given on time, remarkably, and those at the end of the month have been bought for too.  It’s just my schoolfriend who’s posing a problem at present – it so happens that she’s visiting on the weekend of her birthday, so I’ve no excuse for lateness.  However, I’m not going to worry about it, I’ve still got ten days to go and only one present to get.  For someone as unaware of anniversaries as I am, that’s absolutely splendid.

I do have one thing hanging over me, which is the printing of the address labels for the sale catalogue.  I’ve promised to get it out this week.  Actually, I suggested by tomorrow.  Hmm.  I’m going to be out from 11 o’clock and I may be a bit busy in the morning.  It’s one of those occasions where a bout of insomnia at the right time could be useful.

The early hours are usually my wakeful ones, at this time of year.  It’s mainly because it’s too hot.  Or, I’m too hot.  I can’t have the bedroom window open because of Eloise; I don’t trust her, in the dark, to realise how far it is to the ground.  I may be wildly overestimating her absent-mindedness but, having observed a cat closely for the first time ever over the last 15 months or so, the suspicion that they’re creatures of impulse has been confirmed.  By next summer, I really must have worked out a way round this.

When I can’t sleep, I often listen to the radio on headphones.  Not live radio, it’s the World Service in the middle of the night and it’s too unpredictable.  My sister Wink sometimes falls asleep with the radio on and, when we’ve shared a room, that’s been fine to go to sleep to.  But then the programme changes and it wakes me up and I can’t sleep again.  With BBCiPlayer, it’s a different matter.  You play a programme and, at the end, it quietly ceases.  If still awake, I can then choose another.  Last night, I was listening to The Big Sleep.  About two thirds of the way through, I realised that I must have briefly nodded off, because I’d missed a bit.  So I turned it off altogether and slept properly.  Sometimes, I can listen to several episodes of something – I went through a whole 5 part serialisation of a Hercule Poirot mystery in two nights over the weekend.  Oh, and did you know they’re doing Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again?  Again!

Anyway, I rather hope I sleep through the 2 and 3 am blues tonight and am bright and cheerful at 6 instead, because then I can come down and JFDI.  It’d be most excellent, as they used to say.

6 comments on “The not very big sleep

  1. Kipper

    Big Ben or the programs opening and closing music often wake me too. What is disturbing is listening to some interesting feature and then falling asleep with no recollection of program details upon awakening.
    Good night and sleep tight!

    Reply
    1. Z Post author

      I woke at 2 and it was obviously impossible to start the day then. So it’s now 9 o’clock and I’m just sitting down to the computer – but my gardener will be here in a minute, so what I’ll get done is another matter.

      Reply
    1. Z Post author

      The funny thing is, it isn’t, not for another ten days – and I was born a fortnight after my due date. All the Christmas holiday birthdays should be late September and early October, you’d think. I suppose it was the pre-Christmas drinks parties!

      Reply
  2. Glenda

    We have to use window screens in our open windows or the mosquitoes would eat us alive at night. Also keeps cats from going out or others coming in.

    Reply

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