Saturday, July 17, 2010

Sleepless-on-Edge

I am talking to you from the middle of the middle of the night - the small hours when it is no longer today but not yet tomorrow and there is absolutely no-one awake in the whole of the universe except for you. But in this case it's me. I am doing the insomnia shuffle, so you don't have to. Well somebody has to, that is understood. Here is an interesting fact: whenever there is something I particularly want or need to do the next day the odds are that I will have insomnia the night before, either the kind where I can't get to sleep or where I fall asleep only to wake up an hour or two later feeling as though I've just had a couple of double espressos - wired. Today - or last night, if we're going to be precise about this - it was the former. I was tired enough when head went down but once it met pillow - bang: wired. I have a number of remedies up my sleeve for this kind of thing, all manner of things both natural and unnatural, and sometimes the remedies do the trick, especially if I act quickly before insomnia demon has properly grabbed me.

Tomorrow, or later today, in about nine hours time to be exact, I am supposed to meet Mr. Signs, who will be coming straight from Shrink school, at a venue on Brighton sea front where there is to be a university (his) reunion lunch party. I will know some of the people from when we lived in London. It will be jolly, or might be if I were now sleeping instead of talking to you.
Off I go to kick Morpheus's backside.

Sweet dreams, peeps.

6 comments:

Zhoen said...

Sucks.

But on this side of the world... well, it's not just you alone in the universe.

I like listening to recorded books to sleep. Especially John Le Carre (who has a lovely voice) or Terry Pratchett (read by Steven Briggs.)

trousers said...

Insomnia hasn't afflicted me for a while - thankfully - but oftentimes when I'm asleep my mind still feels like it's fully switched on. Either that or very intense dreams.

Hope you catch up on lost sleep later!

Reading the Signs said...

Zhoen, I used to listen to Radio Stockholm. I liked the sound of the language that I always felt on the edge of understanding. But headphones and me don't get on.

Trousers, fortunately it isn't a constant thing and stock up on sleep other times.

Ah, the new day.

Fire Bird said...

hope morning found you not too gritty-eyed...
not suffering so much with this particualr affliction of late - one of the pluses of unemployment I guess!!

Cusp said...

Hope you got to the 'do' and it went well.When I can't sleep I either meditate or, if I'm feeling less esoteric, I watch dreadful shopping channels on TV until I'm so bored I nod off

Reading the Signs said...

Hi FB, being unemployed doesn't seem to do it for me - but I reckon being employed would be immeasurably worse. In the end a mixture of porridge and codeine (one after the other, not together) did it.

Cusp, I'm a terrible meditator so that's out. But shopping channels, especially now we have our dish - and for a dedicated non-shopper like me - yes, I can kind of see how that might work! Ta :)