I once fell asleep during the Lord’s Prayer. Not as a bored child sitting in a stuffy school hall or a partied out teenager dragged to church by my well-meaning but ill-advised parents. No I fell asleep during the Lord’s Prayer when I was a teacher, a proper grown up adult man. I found that closing my eyes for any longer than a routine blink sent sleep crashing down on me like a great big, warm comfortable avalanche. Now my relationship with the big guy in the sky is tenuous in the least, apart from the odd conversation during injury time at the Cardiff City Stadium or screamed references during rare ‘romantic’ nights in, we have a questionable bond but I cherished those moments in that school hall. When I bowed my head reached out a hand to the all mighty and fell fast asleep for 30 seconds, until either Mr Harshaw dug me in the ribs or a small ginger child yanked my tie , causing me to head but myself with my own knee.
Now I’m not a cruel man, I catch spiders in cups and let them out of windows (from the top floor bathroom mind but once he’s out of my property he aint my concern) but one of the cruellest things I’ve done occurred around this time.
During a conversation with a female co-worker I actually started snoring – mid talk. Not just small mouse sized whimpers but great big Homer Simpson style grunts that made windows shake and rodents run for cover. I had my eyes fully open and was even standing bolt upright but somehow my body had listened to details of the British Canal System for long enough (about 3 seconds) and went into automatic sleep mode, a well know survival mechanism normally reserved for sky tv boxes and laptops. It wasn’t that I was particularly bored but that I was lacking that most valuable of human assets – Sleep.
It’s one of life’s cruel ironies that just when you finally get to a stage when you can sleep to your heart’s content, when you can enjoy lazy mornings reading pointlessly massive Sunday papers or when your lie inns upset nothing but your tv watching schedule along comes a bundle that is (all though undoubtedly joyful) an earth shattering mammoth dollop of WOW.
My daughter is a chortling, giggling bundle of joy but she really shows little respect for my sleeping schedule. It’s as though she doesn’t even care if I need to get up at 5 for a meeting or got in late after a night out. I’ve tried reasoning with her, offering her extra scoops of Actimal or on more extreme occasions kidnapping Mr Donkey but nothing works. My only hope is to book in a lie in for 2018.
My son, who is about to go to comprehensive school, will fight against the coming of the sleeping hour with ever more ingenious stories – ‘My teacher has asked me do a report on the 10 o’clock news for Journalism club’, ‘ Good god I’m 11 I should be able to live my life free from rules of any kind thank you very much’ and ‘I’ve just done my nails and have to wait for them to dry’ (that last one isn’t true but is inserted for reasons of gender balancing) and I try to tell him how wonderful sleep is but to him it’s just 8 hours not spent on the X-Box.
Of course naturally you only truly value sleep when you have none of it and when you have plenty of it you don’t really need it. It’s one of life’s cruel paradoxes that exist around every corner. Like only being able to afford nice sports cars when you’re too old to look good in them, being told off for farting in the toilet or being at your physical prime at the same age you spend every night in the pub.
For instance what kind of cruel sense of humour decides that men will reach their sexual peak at 18 while women will have to wait till they’re in their mid-30s?
Women all over the country are wearing their best nighties and snuggling up to their men, ‘Hey big boy’ they whisper into the lug whole, the man fiddles with the remote gently, retracts the finger from the nose and replies ‘Where were you 15 yrs ago?’ Is it cruelty of the biggest order or the reason Kiwi’s was invented?
Of course I’m always at my peak – perhaps that’s why I’m so tired all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment