… waste of a day.
And I’m not talking about my little April Fools joke either – I hope that no-one was taken in by it and I’m sorry if you were.
But the waste of time to which I’m referring is this morning where I sat down here on my chair at about 10:50 after my breakfast and the next thing that I remember was that it was 13:04 and I had a head full of lead. I was totally, utterly and absolutely out of it.
What makes it worse was that I actually managed to have a reasonable night last night, in bed at some kind of respectable time. It didn’t seem to take me as long as it usually does to make tea and all of that, and it was over quite quickly
That left plenty of time last evening to do what needed doing without having to rush around and for once I could go to bed early.
And sleep! I slept like a log, although I don’t have a fireplace here unfortunately – not even a woodstove. I had to use the bed, and it was really comfortable too.
It was a really strange night, for reasons which I’ll explain later, and I was actually half-awake when the alarm went off. I didn’t want to leave my bed but needs must when the devil drives and I fell out of bed.
Checking my blood pressure this morning it was 15.4/8.8, which is a reduction from 16.0/10.6 from the previous evening. That means that I must have had a calm, respectful night, although you won’t think so later.
Next thing to do was to have a wash and then go to take the medication as usual, piles of it again. and then to lay out the living room so that it’s just how Isabelle the nurse likes it.
She almost caught me incommunicado, and in somewhere else too but luckily I was just able to wash my hands in time. She couldn’t find anything wrong today with what I had done, although most of her effort was directed towards her card reader that somehow refused to function this morning.
And then she left, with her cohort coming for the next seven days while she takes a well-earned rest.
After she left, I came in here to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of girls and one of them was interested in me. For some reason she had me confused with someone else and ended up having a little fun with him. It wasn’t until afterwards that she realised that she’d been with the wrong person. Afterwards she actually told me what had happened which I thought was funny. I mentioned it to someone like the teacher or tutor or someone of a group of friends of mine. He told me “don’t worry Eric. I’ll make sure that your friends know about this at an opportune moment” which is exactly what I didn’t want to happen of course.
And there’s more truth to this story than might at first appear too, but this isn’t the place to discuss it.
And then at 04:00 I was told that I might well be recalled into a reunion at 04:30 that morning. What had happened was that a Swiss guy was coming along to talk to the hospital authorities about the best way to store their birth control pills, in a way probably different than most stores at the moment. For this he needed some room in the storeroom so as from 04:30 each morning each storeroom was to have some room set aside for this kind of thing. Of course once he’d finished his demonstration and the product was in there and the fact that there won’t be much of the area left was neither here nor there as long as they had enough for whatever they might expect was coming. They’d speak to me at 04:30 to see whether I’d received my invitation and if not they’d tell me where to go to the reunion and what time it starts etc. It’s absolutely vital that I go there. Having been told about going I must go there without any error at all.
That sounds rather familiar to anyone who might have seen my little April Fools joke. But honestly, I’d written the “joke” entry before I went to bed and didn’t dream this dream until afterwards.
It’s really quite strange that I should dream this more-or-less straight afterwards. If only I could summon up people like TOTGA, Zero and Castor as easily, I really would be one happy little Easter bunny.
There was also something about having to make sure that there were four certain types of ointment prepared for the nurse for tomorrow morning. I wasn’t sure that I’d done it so I thought that I’d better check and I was halfway out of the bed before I realised that I’d have plenty of time to do it in the morning so I got back under the bedclothes. But I’m not sure whether I actually did go to leave the bed in real life or whether the going to leave the bed was actually a dream and I was still under the covers. But anyway after that I lay in a comatose state of being asleep but being conscious of what was going on around me, all the way until the alarm went off.
That was one of the strangest dreams that I’ve ever had too. I’m really not sure if I actually did leave the bed or not, or if it was just a dream, which meant that I was dreaming within a dream, and that doesn’t happen too often. It’s actually quite a rare phenomenon.
There’s a phenomenon called “false awakening” which is a similar (although not the same) process and which has been studied by several psychiatrists. Nevertheless, it’s still interesting.
For breakfast I had the last of my hot cross buns and home-made bread. And it was all really delicious too, a real success that actually looked, tasted, smelled and felt as good as it ought to have done.
And then don’t let anyone say that coffee keeps you awake because I came in here and despite having drunk two full mugs of strong coffee, I crashed out completely and absolutely.
When I awoke, several hours later, I felt absolutely dreadful and it took several hours for me to come round into the real world. As I said, a total waste of a day today
Later on, I managed to find the time to cut up a few sound tracks after I’d converted them to an acceptable format, and then I carried on with a radio programme, finishing off choosing the music, pairing it off and joining the pairs together.
And that’s all that I’ve done, thanks to that mega-crash this morning just after breakfast. I’m never going to make any progress if I can’t organise myself better and stay awake.
It reminds me of the time I was setting of on a coach tour and a passenger sitting behind me said "if I start to snore, driver, you will wake me up, won’t you?"
And I replied "of course I will madam, as long as you promise to do the same to me."
You could joke about things like that 40 years ago, but just you try it now. No-one has any sense of humour these days. As Erma Brombeck said, "when humor goes, there goes civilization" and I for one totally agree with her.
Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, right up to the usual high standard especially as it was a fresh rather than a frozen one. But on that subject it took 15 minutes to fight my way into my freezer, it’s so full. It really is ridiculous, the amount of stuff in there.
It seems that every time I manage to make some space, something else comes along and fills it and it’s all completely never-ending.
But when I’ve finished off this stuffing on Wednesday I’ll eat those Chinese whatsits on Thursday now that I have some soy sauce. That’ll make a little space to fill up with something else.
Moving the vegetables along has proved to be a problem, with the amount that I freeze, I suppose. So it’s just as well that I’m not Boris Johnson.
On his last day in power he took his Cabinet Ministers along to the Ritz for a farewell dinner. When the waiter came along, Johnson said "I’ll have a steak, medium rare"
"And they vegetables, sir?" asked the waiter
"They’ll have the steak too"
– "The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure"
