Mnyeeownn-bonk-squeak-squeak-clatter-bonk – BLINK!!

Flight GW350 from the land of nod has just landed. I blink and I am awake. It is ten to four in the morning, and I am awake enough to realise that I have woken up asking myself the question: God dammit, why am I waking up now?

Insomnia, the by-product of what’s going on around me right now.

Is a terrible, terrible thing.

For a start, it stops you from sleeping and as if that wasn’t bad enough, well… well that is bad enough. And here I am once again; wide awake in the wee small hours, sandwiched between the lovely wife Jodie on the one side and a herd of nocturnally ferrule cats on the other, all while worrying myself stupid over trying to keep entertaining you guys with these blogs. A bad scenario to say the least (after all, you poor peeps have to read all that I write).

But experienced insomniac that I am, I’ll have you know, I do not panic.

The first thing I do is to try to pretend that I am asleep, only dreaming that I am awake. I got that idea from a film I once saw.

And let me tell you now, as a never-fail method of getting back to sleep, it is a total failure; it never works. And now, I am worrying about not being asleep. And worrying about the next blog post I have to write. And then there’s the depressing state of my business (only liking and sharing everything I produce here or on facebook can help). And there’s my rapidly deteriorating quality of life (only liking and sharing everything I do can help) . And let’s not even mention all the sentences beginning with ‘And’ in this paragraph… And I’m getting more and more awake now as I toil for a much better way out of my current predicament, a plan B if you will.

So the next thing one has to do is to run a full body systems check, just like an airline pilot would do before firing up his engines, to see if there is any particular reason why I should have woken up. Obviously here, the question would normally be; why would I want to sleep when I have so much to do? Is twenty hours a day not enough to run a small business?

But on with the story…

A full body systems check takes pure time and a hell of a lot of one’s expertise in the way your body ticks but it brings with it, a high degree of security and it progresses in a manner something like this:

“Brain to bladder, Brain to bladder: systems check and status read out please, over”.

“Roger that brain: bladder reads at 5cms water pressure, micturation drive is on auto-pilot and warning lights are green, green and green: ETP is 09:15, over”.

“Roger, bladder”.

“Brain to bowel, status check: over”.

“Roger brain: bowel at zero tension right now: we will not evacuate unless alarm sounds continuously, rendezvous point is ramp D in the outside car park, or in the phone box if it is raining, over”.

And on it goes.

But by now, I am wide asleep while fast awake (or vise versa), in charge of what feels like a fully sleeping nervous system and I’m still none the wiser as to why. And… this is not normally a good situation to be in since the absence of a specific fault, unfortunately implies the absence of a specific remedy.

Time for a plan C then?

If the problem doesn’t lie within my body.

Maybe it’s all going down outside of my body…

Is the house on fire? No.

Is there rioting outside on the streets? No.

Hurricanes? Flash floods? Tsunamis? Earthquakes? Etc. No, no, no, no, no.

No bloody help at all then! Typical.

Not to worry though, there’s always a Plan D:

I decide to try out a more modern day cure for insomnia that I read about in a Readers Digest something like fifteen years ago. (One possible cure for insomnia is of course reading fifteen year old Readers Digests, though I must add the caution that if you can’t find any, the ensuing searches for them will keep you awake).

Apparently, if you let your whole body cool right down, gradually, as you warm back up again while sandwiched between your covers, you really, really ought to nod off.

But not for me, not in this house, Oh no my friend… I’m from England; Northern England at that. How does one cool down in this country when 24/7, just the thought of moving has me breaking out in massive sweats? No matter what part of the year it is, I might add.

So now I ask myself “What is insomnia?”

“I do not know”, I answer.

“Insomnia is no use to anyone”, I add . . .

Except for the people who write pieces like this one for you my dear reader. And just as I begin to think of committing this piece to paper so to speak, I notice that I am now fast approaching, a long awaited and much needed sleep. My last thought being the worry that if thinking about writing this is proving so soporific, what’s it going to be like actually reading it?

Do me a favour guys, let me know when you wake up.

Who’d run a business eh?…

Sweet dreams zzzzzzzzzz