Stuck in the Senility Loop

When you live with someone that you've known since you were sixteen you see changes in them.  You feel like the same person. You haven't aged.  You don't have wrinkles or grey hair. Your mind is just as sharp as it ever was.  But the person you share your life with.....well!

Everyone has those moments when they go upstairs and can't remember what they went for, or they arrive at work in their slippers, or they inexplicably find their keys in the fridge.  Last night the Long Suffering Husband amused us all with one that we've never come across before.

We were having a (brilliant) birthday meal the William B and between courses we noticed that the LSH had been a long time in the toilet. This is something that polite people don't usually mention but he came back and said, "I'm sorry I was so long, the thing is...."
"Stop, Dad," my daughter reminded him that you don't discuss bowel habits at the dinner table.
"No, No. It wasn't that.  I'd been to the toilet and...."
I could feel a hot flush starting. "Are you really sure you want to tell this story?"
"Yes, it's fine.  You see, I'd just been to the toilet and I washed my hands, then I put them under the dryer and pressed the button and a whole load of foam came out, so I had to wash my hands again.  Then I forgot that it wasn't a dryer and I did it again."

He'd got himself stuck in the senility loop.

Birthday Surprises

"If you cry on your birthday, you'll cry all year round," my Nan said at my fourth birthday party, while I sobbed into her skirt about my mean neighbours.  Wrapped in her warm soft bosom I started to feel calm until I thought about the words.

"But......*sob*.....it's too late.......*sniff*....I've already..*sob* .......cried." 

"Come, come now. We'll run out of tissues if you don't stop soon. We wouldn't want a flood on your birthday would we? All your cards might go floating down the street and we'd have to find someone with a boat to fetch them and I don't know anyone with a boat, do you?"

I didn't.

She let me use the edge of her sleeve to dry my eyes and promised me cucumber.

I decided that if I ever had children then I wasn't going to stop them crying on their birthday. In fact, I might make it compulsory.

When my daughter was 18 we had a surprise party. She came in, saw all her friends and cried. 

Today, my son is 18 and last night I was feeling guilty that I hadn't planned any crying opportunities, only a meal out with the family, which is unlikely to make him cry.

My children are so different that we have always joked that they are like two halves of a perfect person, or a really rubbish one, depending on which bits and your point of view.  At dinner time it was like feeding Jack Sprat and his wife. He would swap his vegetables for her meat. He sleeps like the living dead and she wakes at the slightest noise. She is a night owl and he is an early bird. She can write, he can do numbers. She has friends, he prefers his own company. She likes cats, he likes dogs. He understands logic and she gets people. She likes to be warm while he wears shorts all year round and sleeps in arctic conditions with the windows open and the fan 

blowing. She loved a surprise party but he would hate it.

The Long Suffering Husband said, "I worry that we treat him differently."

As it was the first week back at school after half term and I had forgotten how tired it was possible to be I was completely rational (not) and 

cried. Then I pulled myself together and remembered that we have to treat him differently because they are not the same.

However, we needed to mark the occasion in some way. Presents were left downstairs, so that he could react in private.

Lucky 18 money tree

Then, giggling and whispering we worked on his birthday surprise. We planned a balloon avalanche.

How he didn't wake up, we will never know. 

"She's wetting herself," my daughter told the LSH.

He wiped the tears from his eyes, "Yeah, she does that."

"I can see it," she said.

I checked. No sign of leakage. They laughed more.

An engineer at work

The engineer took over. Precise measurements were needed to get the wrapping paper the right size to fit the balloons in. Apparently, every millimetre counts. We put two balloons in but the third ripped the paper off the 

doorframe. The engineer went back to the drawing board and I banged my elbow on the doorframe.

"Ooh, that's not funny," I whisper-shouted.

But it was.

Finally, we put the balloons in.

"I think it might be even more fun planning a birthday surprise for a reluctant 18year old."

"Well, he won't cry like I did at my surprise party."

"Hmmm. I'm not sure. He might if he can't get out of his room and he needs a wee!"

At six am. We heard his door handle move and we all sprang out of bed to watch. The door opened, closed quickly and he said, "Ugh, I'm going back to bed."

No tears though.

I do not like thee

I do not like thee Dr Fell;

The reason why I cannot tell;

But this I know and know full well;

I do not like thee Dr Fell.

This was one of my favourite rhymes from my Mother Goose book of Nursery rhymes as a child. It interested me. How could you not know why you didn't like someone?

The picture in the book was of a doctor with top hat and black bag brandishing a needle. It was the illustrator's way of explaining the author's dislike. But what if Dr Fell didn't spend his days vaccinating children? What if he had a PhD in Chemistry or Latin?

I've mostly been that annoying person that likes everyone; even the people that everyone else moans about. When people annoy me I try not to dislike them.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not really pally, huggy or kissy with everyone: I keep my distance and you might never know that I like you but I do. 

Except for one person. 

There is someone that everyone loves. They are pant-wettingly enthusiastic about this person. He is the best thing to happen, seems really nice, so friendly, they are so glad he's here. I want to like him too. I want to be like everyone else but I'm not. 

I just have to look at him and the hairs on the back of my neck rise and I can feel myself, like a dog, baring my teeth. Before he is even near me I ready myself for a fight. Whenever he speaks I find myself rolling my eyes and adding witty rejoinders in my head to the end of all of his sentences. When he shakes my hand, he is perfectly friendly, smiling and positive yet I want to reach for the hand sanitiser. I even found myself thinking, "Oh yeah, seems really nice but I bet he beats his wife."

I honestly don't know why I am the only person on the planet to have such an extreme reaction or why he appears to be the only person I've ever met who I feel like this about but I don't think I like it.  

Luckily, he will never know because of my perfect coolness towards all people. Even the Long Suffering Husband can't tell how I really feel about him!

This poor man is my Dr Fell. 

The real Dr Fell wasn't even a doctor with a PhD. He was the Dean of Christ College and the person who didn't like him was Tom Brown (I wonder if this poem was the inspiration for TomBrown's  schooldays?). In 1680 John Fell decided to give Tom one last chance before expelling him, letting him stay if he could translate the following Latin passage:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;

Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

It translates as, 'I do not like you Sabidi, I don't know why but I don't like you.'

I expect the Dean was chuckling to himself when he set the punishment; a way of telling the boy how he really felt. The joke somewhat backfired when Tom became a famous satirist and published his reworking of the text that has lasted in people's consciousness for 336 years and counting.

Grumpy Old Woman Eats

You can't criticise Jamie Oliver. I believe it is against the law. He is a National Treasure; a champion for food, an ambassador of eating and because we all love food and treasure we love Jamie.

I've never eaten in a Jamie Oliver restaurant until yesterday. (I know! Where have I been?). He has five types of restaurant and one of those has been franchised, so that there are 42 Jamie's Italians over the country. I'm sure it won't be long before there are franchises for the diner and the British food restaurant as well; the man appears to be going for world domination.

Can I be honest? 

I've never really liked Jamie. Maybe because I am so much older and grumpier than him. His energy and chirpiness always got me down. Whenever he is on TV showing recipes I think they are unnessisarily complicated; I mean, who stuffs their Sunday Pork roast with higher welfare chicken livers and oysters? Stuffing is easy to make with onions, bread and herbs but for a Jamie recipe it always has to be sourdough bread, organic onions grown on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and ethically sourced sage that really, really wants to be picked. 

His television programmes put me off eating anything he cooked, as he seemed to be sniffing. No. Not just sniffing, hawking back great chunks of mucus and wiping his nose on his sleeve. He may not have done any of that but that was my impression.

Obviously, you have to admire the concept behind Fifteen and the work he is doing around children's nutrition and he is always such a happy chappy.

So, why was my experience of his restaurant, Barbacoa, such a difficult one?

We went there to celebrate meat-loving son's 18th birthday. We could because vegetarian daughter was at work. He loved it but the Grumpy Old Woman in me wasn't too happy. This is what she had to say:

1. Dead animal carcasses hanging in the window? Really? That's just tacky. I know it's a meat restaurant but, well, it's not the restaurant at the end of the Universe, we don't need to have a conversation with our cow before deciding to eat it.

2. How many stairs to get into the restaurant? Bouncers with headsets stopping people who haven't booked or who are early from going upstairs, even to the bar, is a bit pretentious.

3. Ooh. It's pretty. What a view. I like London.

4. Actually, this seat arrangement is only good if you don't like the people you are with. I could have a great conversation with St Paul's Cathedral. *looks at LSH, decides it's not so bad after all.

5. It's very dark in here. I can't see the menu. Oh well, I'll just have the smallest steak they've got.

6. Oh, here we go. Up selling waitresses. The special today is a kilogram of meat between two people. Only £60 per person.

7. My steak looks like a joint of beef that we would share between three for a Sunday roast. It's a square of meat, burnt on the outside and still alive on the inside. It's quite tough and I can't see it.

8. My chips are in a bucket. Why? Why does everyone think we like buckets? Luckily, my steak is on a decent sized plate. I had a scone on a small piece of slate the other day and I still haven't recovered. 

9. Conversation is difficult, with our seating positions, the dark and the clattering noise environment.

10. The waitress comes to ask me something. I can't hear her, so I ask if she has a torch. She brings me a sharper knife; it's terribly difficult to hear. It does help with the chunk of cow, though.

11. The LSH and boy have ribs but are surprised. Can you have ribs off the bone?

12. I hit upon a genius plan and used the torch on my phone.

13. Ordering pudding is so much easier.

14. Bacon in my son's Sundae seems to be taking the meat theme a little far. Luckily, there is no meat in my brownie. There's not much brownie in it though with just a small layer of brownie with a chocolate mousse on top. Yes, it's nice but I feel cheated.

15. I've started a trend. It's much lighter. Everyone has their phone torch on.

16. The bill has a donation to Jamie's charity to tackle childhood obesity included. That seems reasonable if not a little hypocritical, as I wonder how many calories I have just consumed.

Euro Hokey

"This Euro vote thing is a disgrace," the Long Suffering Husband said when I finally arrived in bed after my weekly anger management session that the BBC likes to call Question Time.

"I wouldn't exactly call it a disgrace.  It does seem to be a bit of a pantomime though."

" It's fraud."

"I just think they couldn't get any politicians to be on the 'out' side."

"I'm  not sure it's got anything to do with politicians."

"You could be right there.  The general public all seem to be voting a different way."

"It's terrible that their vote didn't count."

"That's politics. Most people didn't vote for the current government."

"That's different."

"I suppose it is all voting systems are different."

"They should ask for their money back."

"Ha!  That's a bit extreme.  There's more to the BBC than one programme."

"That's still no excuse for deceiving people."

"No, I suppose not.  Still, I don't suppose they did it on purpose."

"What?  Of course they did.  They want everyone's money.  They wouldn't have voted if they thought it wouldn't count. Anyway, I really liked those Polish Milkmaids."

I wash shocked.  How could the LSH be basing his decision on whether to stay part of the EU on Polish milkmaids? 

He was talking about something much closer to his heart: the Eurovision Song Contest. They have announced that the voting system will change this year. Instead of the public votes counting as one weighted vote on the country's jury the public votes from all countries will be added together and announced at the end. Commentators are saying that it will make for an exciting finish. All news writers are talking about Poland's busty butter-churning act of 2014 which was voted in the bottom five by the UK jury, but scored the highest with the British public. However when the scores were combined, it did not score enough to get into the overall top 10 and so it received no points from the UK at all. The LSH has always thought this to be the biggest injustice in his life, so far. If none of the other countries liked the Polish entry, though, they could still get no points (I think).  

I'm confused.  

The public can have very different to the experts and Eurovision and the EU referendum are both sounding like a game of Hokey Cokey. 

Parents can be such a disappointment

An imagined blog takeover.

Okay. So, I know she's been telling you about our University visits. I know because other people mention it. I don't read her blogs because, well, I don't often read but if I did I wouldn't pick the ramblings of a mad woman that I am unfortunate enough to have to live with on a day to day basis. After we went to Southampton she wrote that I was a disappointment. All because she wants to have coffee with a friend. Now that we've finished I thought you might like to hear my side of the story.

Parents! I know that everyone's parents are embarrassing but mine take it to a whole new level.

It's always worse at the Unis I actually like. 

At Sussex my mum went around 'tidying up' the Rubic's cubes, while Dad was arranging golf games with the head of maths. They loudly discussed everything. 

Yesterday, we went to Nottingham.

It's pretty. Even in the rain.

"It wins the prize for the best lake," my mum told anyone who'd listen. "You should make the most of it while you're here," she told students, "You'll miss it when you've left."

How can you miss a lake?

I'm surprised they didn't ask.

Students and lecturers came over and said, "Maths?"

The parents laughed, "That obvious is it?"

How could they not have noticed all maths students had been given a green bag?

"Any questions?" was the standard opening line. I had no questions and said so. My Parents do not understand this. They feel they have to invent questions and the whole thing becomes some kind of squirmy interrogation. 

Mum was particularly embarrassing. She was having one of her 'perfectly fine' days;  leaning on walls, going pale, always being the last one up the hill and answering, "perfectly fine," whenever anyone asked if she was OK. It is, I suppose, preferable to her telling people about being a woman of a certain age and her internal bits. Amazingly clumsy, as ever, she managed to cause a commotion by tripping over something every time she left a room. I would have preferred her to be like every other middle class, aspirational Essex parent we saw but, as she loudly said, she couldn't manage that shade of orange set off by the fluorescent white tooth strip.

I really liked Nottingham but I don't think I could go there now. What if they remember my parents?

"Oh, goody, I love a crossword." Mum and Dad were excited by the lunchtime puzzle we were given. 

"Why will he let you help but not me?" Dad complained.

"He's not really letting me. I'm just better at reading upside down. Ha ha. If they don't wash they're smellyphants. That's the best crossword clue ever."

I'm sure I was meant to do it on my own.

The lecturer was trying to be funny, I know but the phrase, "sock related angst" shouldn't have caused snorting.

What if I decide to go there and I end up in a pass group led by the student mum chose to interrogate about accommodation?

"So, did you live in halls in the first year?"

"Yeah."

"Did you like it?"

"Yeah."

"Which one were you in?"

"Hugh Stewart."

"Sounds like a Seventies paedophile. Was that catered?"

"Yeah. It was just easier. I like cooking an'all that but, you know, didn't have to think."

"If you could have first year again, would you do the same?"

"Yeah."

"No regrets?"

"Nah."

"So are you out........."

Her memory fails her.

"I beg your pardon."

"I'm mean, this year, you're living in.."

"I'm in a house this year."

"A house over in, erm, over that side."

"My house is in Lenton."

"Ah yes, Lenton that's the word I was struggling for. I meant to say, 'Are you living out in Lenton this year?" not 'Are you out?' , which, quite frankly is a bit of a personal question."

My parents have made it impossible for me but if I didn't go....

Quick. Log onto UCAS. Click. Accept. 

I'll be in my room for the next few months - just got a few As to get.

Never too old for a noodle

School holidays are great.........

Except the swiming pool is weird.

There are children in it.  

 The adult lane swim isn't at lunchtime, it's at 10am or soon after that depending on aqua-fit, which seems to be middle aged women floating around in the water to music.

At 10.45, with another 18 lengths before I reached my target, they started to circle. Dropped off by parents hoping for a spot of housework that wasn't ruined within 10 minutes.  They gathered in the coffee area, chatting loudly.  "Hello Miss," they waved and pointed. The other people in the pool looked at me disapprovingly.

"They're here already," said a man with a large by-pass scar on his chest.
"Hmm.  They're like sharks."
"Better get out then," another woman said to a passing swimmer.
"Oh, it seems like a very short session.  I can't believe they're here for their, what do you call it? fun for all session."
"Ha! Fun for all.  That's a laugh. It's no fun for us. All that splashing!"

I kept swimming. 

By the time they were allowed in, screaming, laughing and splashing I only needed another four. 

I swam more, negotiating my way  through the toddlers in boats, dive-bombing teenagers, balls, floats and colourful noodles. It did seem fun. 

While I was floating and getting my breath back, the lifeguard at the bottom of the flume caught my eye. He took a break from assessing which children we would be prepared to risk his life for and which he'd happily let drown and said, You're brave."

"No, I hadn't finished."

"But the children."

"Oh, they don't worry me. They're having fun." 

"You should tell that to the other old gits that were in the pool with you."

"Excuse me!! Other?"

I grabbed a floating noodle and tried to rest my feet on it, flipping myself into a full backward somersault. Ignoring the lifeguard's shuddering shoulders I leapt up with as much dignity as I could muster, smiled and said, "You're never too old for a noodle."

Children can be such a disappointment.

From the moment a child is born the parents and particularly the mother can cease to exist in their own right.  If you are unlucky enough to be the last of your friends to have a baby, any conversation with your friends that doesn't revolve around their children, nappies, sleep, food or washing becomes impossible.  Women often put their own dreams and aspirations on hold for the sake of their children and their can be some transference.

In our recent University visits we've met many aspirational parents.
"Oh, I couldn't consider anything less than a Russel Group."
"You see, I went to York.  It's important to go to a good University."
"I'm only a dinner lady but I've got loads of common sense.  My girl will be the first in the family to go to University.  I would have liked to have gone and studied art but I had to get a job."
There's nothing wrong with any of this, providing that you remember that it's not your decision to make.
You see the eye rolling of the teenagers as their mum says, "You can't live here, this kitchen is disgusting. You'll need an en-suite," and their Dad says, "I would chose this one. They've got great industry links.  This is where you'll go."

I have tried.  Honestly, I've tried really hard not to influence my son's decision, which can be easy.  I usually know what he's thinking and we mostly agree. I knew he was on a roller coaster of emotions on this visit; vascillating more than a politician.

Sitting in the Maths common room the earnest looking chap asked, "So, have you had a good day?"
"Oh, yes.  I have."
The Long Suffering Husband kicked me under the table.
"No, really.  I have.  I think he should come here."
The young man beamed at my validation of his University.  I had made up up my mind and even though the signs were there I chose to ignore them.  I took absolutely no notice when the lad told us that student life was a triangle of study, sleep and socialising but at this University you could only pick two.  From the look of him, he'd chosen to give sleep a miss. I hadn't been at the maths talk but I should have spotted the signs when the LSH texted me - "Take your time, you're not missing much. There's maths in that."

I had spent a very pleasant couple of hours having lunch with my friend from University.  We talked about our children (of course), had a bit of a grumpy old woman rant, discussed our parents' health and the old days.  BC.  Before children, when we had our own lives and futures, when we spent the evening goat dancing or climbing the steps/slope back from the bar to our halls.

Quick coffees and lunches could become an easy habit on those visits where you try not to clean the communal kitchen and go to the supermarket to buy big bags of pasta.

In the car on the way home a voice piped up from the back.

"I'm thinking No."

"Really?  It's a very good University."

"Yeah, I know.  Russel group."

"Well then."

"I didn't really like the people."

"There wasn't anything wrong with them."

"Hmmmmmm.  That's what you think."

"Oh, you're such a disappointment."

The November February Problem

It could be argued that my marbles are not as firmly in the pot as they used to be, as I kept writing yesterday's date as 9th November 2016. I was tired and at the end of my long teaching day lots of my worms got muddled, as Sarah Kennedy used to say on Radio 2.

I checked my marbles. They were all still there.

I have always confused November and February. One vivid memory from primary school is of a teacher shouting at me. Her face was so close to mine I could make out the outline of her, oh-so-fascinating contact lenses in her green eyes and as she started to shout her mouth opened so wide I imagined myself swallowed and chomped by the metal filled teeth.

"It's February! Not November! What were you thinking of, girl?"

I inhaled, ready to try to find an answer.

"You know your months. I can't believe you would get this wrong. You're a clever girl. How could a clever girl do something as stupid as this?"

Again, I prepared myself to answer or fight back tears, wondering if it was best to tell her I didn't know, it was a mistake, I was sorry, or give her some reasons why I confused the two months.

"Sit down and write in your book, 'I know the month is February,' ten times."

I wrote:

I  know the month is February

I  know the month is February

I  know the month is February

I  know the month is February

I  know the month is February

I  know the month is February

I  know the month is November

I know the month is February 

I know the month is February 

I know the month is  February

Oblivious, I took it back to the teacher. 

"Are you trying to be funny? Go and see Mrs H."

I cried all the way to Mrs H's room and Mrs H took pity on me. She didn't think I was trying to be funny. I was usually far too timid to be funny. 

"Did you know you'd written it?" 

"No," I told her, "I just get confused. I don't know why."

"Well, you must make an extra special effort to remember which one it is from now on. Will you promise me that you'll do that?"

I inhaled a sob, wiped my nose on the back of my sleeve and nodded.

She handed me a tissue, "We'll say no more about it, then."

When I arrived back in the class, blotchy faced and exhausted my teacher smiled at me with one of those thin lipped smiles that only lifts at one edge and said, "Get on with your work, Julia."

It was never mentioned again and I have spent my life shamefully trying to control the Novembers that appear in February and the Februaries that appear in November.

Now that I've been on the planet for half a century I think it's time to admit defeat. It should no longer be a shameful secret. I get November and February confused, so what?

There are good reasons too. Both months are cold,dark and boring (unlike December, which has Christmas to redeem it an January with its promise of bright sparkly new things to come) February is the second month and November the penultimate one (I think there's a pattern in that, even if you don't). Today's numerical date would be 10.2.16 but if it was November it would be 10.11.16 and two in Roman numerals is II. They both have celebrations that I'm not keen on: fireworks and valentines.

In fact I have a proposal. In this modern decimalised world we have no need for twelve months, so let's just get rid of November and February. December and January could have 60 days each and we could have a much longer Christmas/New Year holiday.

I think we can all agree that would be a good idea.

There's a hole in my bucket

"There's a hole in my bucket," said the new minister for Education in 1951.
"Well fix it," said the Prime Minister.
"With what shall I fix it, dear Prime Minister?"
"With some new exams, dear Secretary of State."
"OK.  I'll call them O levels."

"There's a hole in my bucket," he repeated a few years later when people complained that just having a pass or fail wasn't enough.
"Well fix it then,"
"With what shall I fix it dear Prime Minister?"
"With grades dear Secretary of State."

"There's a hole in my bucket," said the the new Labour Education Secretary in the mid sixties. "We can't have an education system that is just for the top 20% of the country.

"Then fix it then."

"With what shall I fix it, dear Prime Minister?"

"How about some new exams?"

"Good idea. I'll call them CSEs."

"There's a hole in my bucket," complained the Education Minister in 1975. "The grading system for O levels is confusing."

"Well fix it then."

"With what shall I fix it, dear Prime Minister?"

"With some new exams, Secretary of State?"

"No, we've done that. I think I'll just make all exam boards use the same standardised norm-referenced, letter based marking scheme."

"There's a hole in my bucket," said the Education Minister in 1985. "It doesn't seem fair that only the top 10% of pupils taking an exam  can get an A no matter how many questions they get right."

"Then fix it."

So he did.

"There's a hole in my bucket, he complained a few years later. "It still doesn't seem fair that not everyone is allowed to take the exams that Universities like."

"Well fix it then."

"With what shall I fix it dear Prime Minister?"

"With some new exams, dear Secretary of State

"Good idea, Prime Minister. I'll call them GCSEs."

"There's a hole in my bucket. Everyone knows too many children are passing these wretched exams. They look too easy."

"Then fix it."

"With what shall I fix it, dear Prime Minister."

"With some new exams, dear Secretary of State."

"That might be a bit drastic. Let's just make them harder."

"There's still a hole in my bucket and I've tried everything. I've changed the curriculum, blamed the teachers but the little nuggets are still making it look too easy and they don't die at 45 like they do in China."

"Well fix it then."

"With what shall I fix it, dear Prime Minister?"

"With new exams, dear Secretary of State."

"I took O levels, I liked O levels. I might call them O levels."

"I'm not sure, we've had those before."

"I'll keep the name a surprise then. We could grade them in numbers, I don't suppose anyone will remember that we had that before."

"We could but maybe we've been singing the song wrong."

"You're right, Prime Minister. Eliza finally fixed the bucket with a bucket. We need a bucket."

"Why not have three?"

"Jolly good idea, Prime Minister. A big bucket for maths and English, a medium bucket for subjects that clever children, like mine will take, such as Science and Latin and a teeny tiny bucket for those silly artsy-fartsy subjects."

"Genius!"

How many holes could there be in three buckets?

Too many stories

Yesterday, someone I know posted details from their electronic tag onto Facebook of their night's sleep. In this over sharing world the boring details of everyone's lives are constantly in our faces; so much so that I'm surprised that my head hasn't burst with all the trivial facts about people that I'm carrying in it. I am one of those sad people that reads and remembers. I'm unlikely to post the same meme on your Facebook wall everytime it does the rounds just because it's about jam and you work in a marmalade factory. Other people seem to be less cursed than I am.

The thing about this trivial fact, though, was that I just don't understand it. This person had slept for 8 hours and 44 minuites without waking once and only had 8 minutes of restlessness. How? How is this possible? How can you sleep all night without waking up? I would think I'd died if I slept like that.

The problem is that there are too many stories and they always appear between 2am and 5am. If I write them down I can go back to sleep, even though writing in the dark often means that I can't read them in the morning anyway but if I try to ignore them there is no chance of any further sleep.

I think I've always been like this. When I was younger I would have to read the book I had started at bed time. Some books demanded to be read more than others: the Diary of Anne Frank was particularly insistent, I remember and got me into trouble at school the next day for yawning in English.

The stories can appear fully formed or be the seed of an idea and sometimes they come from something that happened in the day.

Last night, it was a murder mystery, with a blackened, shrivelled body found in a box.

 I had been for a swim and sauna earlier in the evening. The swimming pool is a fantastic place to listen to men's conversations as you don't have to try very hard because they are loud and repeat their story at a rate inversely proportional to its interest to the listener. I overheard a man at reception booking his son in for lifeguard training and then I heard him repeat the conversation at least six times. As if that wasn't enough I then heard one of the men he had shared the conversation with tell another man.

The sauna contained one relaxed beardy man. There was a time when a beardy man would have been over fifty and a bit crusty but these days even young men can be hirsute. Normally people in the Sauna are not to be talked to as it's a bit awkward when you are half dressed and sweaty but I had to make an exception.

After about five minutes he began to snore. I sat wondering if it was safe to sleep in the Sauna and how long he had been in there before I arrived.  I debated leaving. I could sneak out and leave him to sleep, which would be preferable to shaking him awake, even if I was culpable in the death of a beard. I stood up and he stopped snoring, it went completely silent; there weren't even breath sounds. It was too late. I couldn't leave. There might already be a body in the sauna with me. Still, preferring not to touch a man in speedos I flicked some water from my drink bottle at him. He snorted, choked and said, "Oh, I think I got a bit too relaxed."

I smiled one of my thin, "don't talk to me" smiles.

Undeterred he continued, "I think I heard myself snore. Did I fall asleep?"

Huffing and sliding further down the wooden slatted bench I nodded.

"I don't think I did."

"That's good, it could be fatal. I wonder if anyone has died in the sauna?"

"I read about a man in the States whose family thought there was a strange black man in their sauna, only to discover it was the charred remains of their father. They are trying to sue the sauna manufactures because they say the timer must have broken. "

Luckily, any further talking was interrupted by the man with the life-guarding son and his mate and we both sat listening to another two recounts of the conversation with the receptionist.