Zombie

Yesterday was such a waste. I didn't really know how I ought to deal with the terrible lack of sleep. I was absolutely wide awake at 7am, so I got up. You know that feeling, when your body knows it is exhausted yet puts on such a bravado of being energic, preternaturally alert and full of beans that it's actually painful? Then about an hour later you have such a crash you have to yell for someone armed with a spatula to come and scrape you up off the floor.

I showered off some of my fatigue, had a shave, soaked my chin in aftershave, cleaning my teeth so hard I spat half a pint of diluted blood into the sink, gargled on mouthwash, and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, wondering who the zombie looking back at me was.

Once dressed I walk to the village corner shop and armed myself with the Observor, two cans of Red Bull and a lottle of Lucazade (the best hangover cure known to man as long as you dissolve two headache tablets into it). The sunshine did nothing to lift my spirits, in fact it dampened them considerably. The Lord hath blessed the Sunday with a beautiful day and I am going to toss it aside by feeling crap and miserable for most of it. Damn you!

Came home to find Lukas and Danny (who had as usual stopped for a sleepover) wrestling with the George Foreman and making themselves a toasted bacon and cheese sandwich. I rue the day I instructed them in promoting the normal bacon sandwich into a more blissful design by clamping it into the hinged part of the grill. They are now addicted to them and we get through several packs of bacon a week; although I guess this puts Andrew out more than it puts me out. I asked if they were going to make me one but only got blank looks. Lukas told me he'd be willing to put the bacon on for me once they'd finished. Gee, thanks.

Danny was just wearing (I think) a pair of Gabe's old pyjama bottoms. It amazes me how a child can look scruffy in just one item of clothing, but Danny managed it. Noticed that Danny is starting to get that kind of belly Gabe started developing around the time he was Danny's age. The boy-boobs will surely follow. Perhaps I ought to have a word? But thanks to kick-boxing and puberty Gabe is looking considerably less chubby these days, so I guess I'll keep quiet and let nature and nuture both do whatever they decide to do.

Is it a good thing that someone else's child feels so at ease with us he thinks it fine to wander around the house virtually unclothed? Once whilst I was showering I heard someone come in to use the toilet. I finished my shower and pulled back the curtain to grab a towel to find a (then) nine-year-old Danny sitting calmly on the loo. He looked at me and without missing a beat gave me a little smile and wave, then continued the release of pooh-depth-charges into the bog. I hurriedly pulled back the shower curtain and made a considerably lengthy attempt of drying myself off; at least until I was sure that Danny had finished his business and was out of there.

Anyway, once armed with a self-made bacon toastie (the boys had selfishly used up all of the cheese) I settled down with The Observor and one of the cans of Red Bull and my Luzacade. Barely made it through the Review section before my eyelids began to droop. I became a little tearful at this stage (metaphorically at least) as all the signs now pointed to me having a really terrible day.

Andrew came down and went somewhere, then Gabe came down and went somewhere, and I barely registered either of them. Then Lukas and Danny came down (now both dressed) and shoved on the PS2 for further killing sprees.

I wondered what to do. I really felt like going to bed. I thought maybe I could nip back for a couple of hours. Could I trust myself to get up when the alarm sounded? Or would I just slam it off and then go straight back to sleep, awaken in a daze at 1am, my body-clock having gone into a magician's hankerchief who'd then pummelled it with a hammer.

Oh sleep, beautiful sleep. How I needed thee. How I knew I couldn't have thee.

I actually began to drift off but then the phone rang. Or at least I think it did as Lukas and Danny paid no attention to it. I prised myself off the sofa and answered it.

It was Sarah - probably the one person I ought not to be speaking to unless I was in full possession of my cognitive abilities. She asked how I was and I decided to be honest and tell her I felt terrible. Sadly, this got brushed aside as Sarah went on to blabber about how she was sorry she was in how she spoke to me when I phoned her on Friday but she was having problems with Ruth not wanting to go to her ex-husbands (Sarah's ex-husbands, not Ruths) and her ex-husband (whose name completely escaped me at the point of the call) was creating a stink especially as Ruth had told him about me and he's been firing all sorts of questions at Sarah and ... and ... and ...

Sadly, my brain could not keep up and my attention fell down a deep, dark hole. I was barely conscious by the time Sarah had ceased rabbitting on and I hadn't taken in the last three minutes of the conversation. So I fired off something non-committal (I think it was 'I bet things'll look not so bad after a nights sleep' - which judging my Sarah's reaction was enough to get away with my lack of attention). I asked if I could call her back tomorrow evening, when my neurons might actually be firing. She said okay.

I crawled through the dead hours somehow until half-seven, then crawled upstairs into bed.

And I slept like a baby. A dead one.