Insomnia Part 73

I don't know whether I can blame *holiday-mood* for this, but last night was one of the worse night's sleeps (or lack of sleeps) I've ever experienced. I tried and I tried and I tried to drift off, but nothing seemed to do the trick. I hate it when my mind does this to me. What does it achieve? I can't really put into words how totally dreadful and drained I feel at the moment. Every physical action is a struggle, yet I know if I succumb to the nap my body truly desires and probably needs my body clocked will go completely kaput and I'll be right back to another night of watching the orange numerals on the clock-radio tick slowly by.

I thought I'd managed to kick this insomnia business as it hasn't troubled me for such a time. I've really rediscovered the knack of sleeping; I think the fact I have wrestled with my minimal drink problem and thrown it off is the reason for this. Each night I've barely slipped under the covers before my brain succumbs to the beautiful darkness of a little death practise. Plus there's the fact my life seems to have simplified over the past couple of months. The last time I faced a sustained period of sleep-ills was during that dreadful Andrew/Kevin business. Now everything in most departments seems settled I can succumb to Mr Sandman without concern.

I woke up Saturday morning and instead of yanking myself from beneath my duvet as I normally do I allowed myself a cosy half an hour of a luxurious semi-snooze. I let my mind drift to whatever region of space it felt a need to drift to and it hitch-hiked its way down to Southampton. Lord - it was so nice waking up with someone else in a bed last weekend. It would not have even mattered if we'd not gone on to have $ex, or had had $ex the previous evening. Just the presence of another human being of adult age in the bed was indescribably lovely and I don't think I appreciated it in all its splendiferousness at the time (a curious habit of mine). I know I shouldn't think this but it brought back such rigid memories of Poppy. Usually like me she was an up-and-at-em type of gal but on the odd Sunday (of course before Andrew and Gabriel and Lukas and The Grim Repear came along) when it came to bed you could hardly get us out of the thing. Poppy was the only person in my entire history who I shared a bed with as half of a couple.

Eventually I got up and brewed myself a coffee and put on some toast. But then I though to merry hell with it and took coffee and toast and the digital radio upstairs and went back to bed. For chuff's sake, I'm on holiday aren't I? I tuned into to Adam & Joe on 6Music and listened to two forty-year-old blokes pretend to be teenagers.

By midday I began to feel really guilty and felt I was in danger of letting the day slip completely away from me, so I showered and dressed, maintaining the holiday motif by wearing shorts, and tripped downstairs.

Lukas was the only one of my sons present, although my weekend pseudo-son, Danny, had already found his way to Chez BrynT and the pair were blowing each other's heads off on Call of Duty. Lukas actually noticed I'd gotten up and told me he was getting worried as he thought I might be ill. I said I just fancied a bit of a lie-in. Lukas didn't answer as he was swearing at Danny who'd just dropped a grenade on his a$$.

I asked Lukas if he felt like doing anything today; my son then looked at me as though I was a some crazy dude. He said, like what? So I said, dunno, perhaps we could go to the pictures and get some father-son time in. Lukas said what about Danny, so I said okay some father-son-and-special guest time (although that qualifies as a bit of a bind - it's not that I don't like Danny; he's just one of those vacant, scruffy, lollopping kids who's never going to leave a mark on life (or even a smudge)). Lukas said I could have had some father-son time on Thursday if I'd taken his to basketball. This was unfair, and I told Lukas so. He sort of reddened and started to look a little guilty, so I hoped he thought it a bit unfair as well.

In the end we didn't go to the pictures, but we watched a couple of films that I'd managed to (...ahem...) purloin whilst munching on crisps and popcorn and drinking whiskey (me) and shandies (Lukas and Danny). The first film was Yes Man which was not as half bad as I thought it would be as it contained that caveat "Warning: Many Scenes Will Contain Jim Carrey" but aside from the odd Carrey-gurn he contained himself and some of the dialogue was extremely well done. I'd read the book (and spotted the author, Danny Wallace, as an extra at a bar in one scene) and it there was about 5% of the book in the film.

Second film was the remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" starring a wooden Keanu Reeves playing a wooden alien made of wood (I've made that last bit up). The plot of this film is thus:

Keanu: Humans are scum. You are killing The Earth. We are going to wipe you from this planet.

Woman: But I love my son (even though he's no blood relation to me) !

John Cleese: Here I am in a cameo playing someone very clever. Listen to some Bach.

Keanu: I was wrong! I must save you!!

Then it was back to bed. And my body made me pay for my laziness this morning. Big Time.