Of course I bloody well am. Wide awake, mind racing at a hundred miles an hour, dredging up long-lost incidentals from my archives and chucking them onto the top of the ‘read now’ tray. So I’m lying in bed for two hours trying to concentrate on my breathing and sleeping and up pops the words of an old song, I find myself humming ” Red Light Spells Danger” Lala bloody la!. “Shut up” shouts my internal antagonist. “You must sleep.”
“Stop chucking these random tunes into my head” my diminished other self screams back!
These days I am a self-employed lay-about and professional time waster (Artist and crafter is what I tell my partner). Mornings are not my strong point these days and my lifestyle is such that this matters very little. As such I generally sleep very well. Two exceptions: the night before a period; and the night before a time specific (relatively) early start. When both of these circumstances coincide my brain’s little joker starts up the “cataclysmic misdirection” protocol. The little devil opens files at random, filling the screen with pop ups and causing the “close all programs and shut down” protocol to fail “Error – Program not responding” messages cram my brain as I try to close down the open files. Its like I’ve kicked over the bloody trash bin and am desperately wishing I’d emptied it before it got so full.
Being an old version my brain doesn’t seem to have a “Ctrl/Alt/Del” function and demands an emergency download and full back up .
Hence I am sat here at 2amish downloading onto lists and calenders, creating hard copies of data ,basically performing a long-winded manual shut down. There is no way this bloody thing is going to be ready for a 7:30 reboot.
Anyway it got me thinking. Firstly about why my life isn’t punctuated by songs that invoke very clear images (those of you who get this – like my parter, are very lucky). Then about the paintings I needed to hang at an exhibition in May and where to get new fittings to comply with the contract. Then I thought I needed the bathroom. Then started thinking I was hungry. Then searching the memory banks for the name of the guy I danced with at a certain nightclub 24years ago. Then that I need to make a note to call a gas engineer. Had I missed the deadline for planting early potatoes? What had I done with the car keys? What should I get my partner for our 20th anniversary? What was I going to wear in the morning -the list of random shit goes on and on coupled with the random playlist which includes “Jingle Bells” (its April!), and a nice bit of Human League and that bit of classical music that was ruined by that chocolate bar advert. You know the one “Everyone’s a fruit a nut case…” (well they’re not wrong there!)
In case you were wondering, the guy – the one I danced with – his name was Paul Cushing (“Hi” if you happen to be reading – I am slightly embarrassed now).
Anyway, last week I actually dreamt that I couldn’t sleep ……….
