… what the hell is happening to me right now.
Most of the afternoon I’ve spent fighting off wave after wave of sleep. In fact, it’s reached such a stage that I probably would have been better off and accomplished more had I succumbed and had a comfortable half-hour on the chair in the office.
The trouble is that it never turns out to be half an hour though. I could be crashed out on the chair for several weeks and it all would be the same.
Despite everything else it turned into another quite late night. I was browsing away on the internet before going to bed and came across a match between Stenhousemuir and someone who I’ve forgotten in the Scottish League Second Division.
It was such an exciting match that not only did I not remember the opposition but I can’t even remember the score. All I know is that in some kind of vague ethereal kind of way I know Stenhousemuir’s goalkeeper
So I watched the game until the final whistle (at least, according to the Internet broadcast which was running way in arrears) and then went off to bed.
When the alarm went, I fell out of bed as usual and the first thing that I did was to check my blood pressure. And to my surprise, it’s 12.9/8.0, which is well within the limits that they’ve set me. Last night it was 15.5/9.3 so that’s quite a significant drop.
So with the blood pressure medication apparently working, I went into the kitchen for some more, and a pile of the rest of the stuff too.
Back in here I sat down and began to deal with the dictaphone notes from the night. We started off with a group of us working on songs last night, a group of us. We were singing some of Help Yourself’s songs. The person who recorded it made something of a mess of it so we had to start again. In the meantime he went to fetch the albums and put the albums on for us to listen to. One of the tracks of course was MONA and the other one was WHO DO YOU LOVE (which is not by Help Yourself but by Quicksilver Messenger Service, but let’s not go letting facts get in the way of a good dream). I was getting everything ready when a woman came over to chat. She introduced herself and said that she was talking on behalf of her two children. They really loved these songs even though the timing was rather weird. We asked what about the timing that was weird. In the end she identified the gaps in between the songs. We said that if the gaps between the songs was the problem we could record the whole thing for her but have a gentle lead-in to each one where the album started. She seemed quite pleased with that. She asked me if I was going on a holiday this year I laughed and said “when I can get the timing right I’ll be going” to which she laughed too.
And later on one of our group was summoned to hospital. Although he currently couldn’t walk he was sent a taxi voucher and could apply for a taxi to go there. We went to reception to make this appointment. He left the paper with the agent and told her to book a taxi for him. After he’d gone she began and reached the letter C before she found a firm willing to take him. She wrote down all the details carefully but it turned out that that one was owned by her husband …fell asleep here …The people booked the taxi for him and sent him the details. But when it turned up the driver was actually his wife’s ex-husband so it was a very gloomy, depressing ride to Paris, and even worse because on the way back they had to stop to pick up something else. The conversation proved to be extremely difficult with this guy because of the issues that he was having with his wife’s ex-husband etc. Eventually he made it back home. When everyone learned about his trip to Paris we all tried our best to have the trip covered by another company but we couldn’t find another company that wanted to go to Paris so we could see that this was going to be an extremely difficult proposition getting this guy to Paris without the insurance company or his wife knowing about it
And that reminds me of the story of the woman who ordered a taxi to driver her and her new husband to the airport to go on their honeymoon the day after their marriage, only to find that the taxi was driven by her ex-husband. I could well imagine the conversation that took place during that 40-mile trip.
My taxi passengers were much different than that though, like the one whose claim to fame was to have beaten her partner to death with a frozen chicken. Crewe is a very strange place.
Having dealt with that, the next task was to hunt down some music. There are two tracks that I need for a radio programme that I’m preparing right now. and finding them is complicated. But it was worth it because I came across some more stuff that will come in handy too at a later date.
Then I had to download it all, convert it into a format that I could use and then edit it so that it’s suitable to broadcast. All of that takes time.
But it’s probably going to be worth it because while I was delving deep into some very lost archives I came across not just a copy of an album that was considered by Columbia Records to be their worst-selling album ever and abandoned quite quickly, but some songs that were actually recorded during the sessions but omitted from the pressing
So having assembled all of my music, I could pair it off and then join the music together in each pair, and then begin to write the notes. And I’m about a third of a way through them. I can hopefully finish off the rest tomorrow.
Things might have been much more advanced today had I not had to keep on fighting off these waves of sleep.
And then there was the nurse bringing back my medical card, then breakfast, followed by the cleaner bringing me to post, followed by the lunchtime fruit, and then the mid-afternoon hot chocolate.
That’s probably not all the interruptions either. It’s quite likely that there were others in amongst all of that but I can’t remember them now.
Tea tonight was a burger cooked in the air fryer and that was a success but the onions weren’t they don’t need 10 minutes in there with the burger – 5 minutes is plenty for them and I’ll have to remember that. They were somewhat … errr … overcooked.
Still, never mind. This air fryer is all one big learning curve. We’ll get there in the end.
But right now the only end that I seem to be getting to is the one at the end of my tether. I’m going through another one of those phases where I just can’t seem to actually accomplish anything.
There’s so much work around here, yet I start something and never seem to finish it, with all of these distractions going on and I don’t know how or am not able to stop them.
At times I feel rather like Fridtjof Nansen, the Polar explorer and humanitarian when he said "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on"
But as Louis XIV said, "at our age, we must no longer expect good fortune". I shall just have to work harder.
Either that or put my bed in the microwave. That way I’ll have my 8 hours sleep in just 10 minutes.
.
