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My wife’s deadline supersedes mine (partly because my producer hasn’t got back to me to give me notes on my scene by scene, so I can’t yet get on with my last writing job of 2018) and so I did most of the child care today. I was too tired for baking and it was too cold and wet outside for play, so I kept things as simple as possible. Even so at around about 4pm I fell asleep in my (normal-backed) armchair. I knew it was coming and felt it would be OK. Phoebe was happily watching Noddy and Ernie was playing in his travel cot. I’d given him my phone, with the screen locked, which is enough to keep him happy. There’s the slight chance he might lock me out of my phone or accidentally call the emergency services, but it’s worth the risk. Today he just managed to turn on an episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage which haunted my dreams as I drifted in and out of exhausted snoozing.
Phoebe woke me up twice and I am not sure how much actual sleep I got, but it was enough to revitalise me and see me through the rest of the day. Ernie had as usual managed to take out my driving licence and a couple of other cards I keep in my phone wallet. But he’d also found a £20 note that I hadn’t realised was in there and torn it into three pieces. I wasn’t sure if he was showing his distaste for capitalism or the monarchy or Scottish economist Adam Smith (or possibly making a more general point about the comparative lack of female representation on the back of UK bank notes). Or maybe he was attempting to satirically demonstrate how much money would be worth after Brexit.
But this is one of the reasons you can’t fall asleep while you’re looking after a 14 month old (another reason is that they might die).
I sellotaped the note back together. I think it will be all right. If not I will deduct it from his pocket money.
I did the night time dog walk/stone clear and tried out my new head torch. I had had high hopes that it might transform my stone clearing, but I presume head torches have only been worn before by men who have lost all their hair, given up hope and subsequently not cared about how society might judge them. My long locks were buffeted by the wind and obscured the torch light as often as not. Sure I could get some kind of anorak with a hood that coulee be pulled up around my chin and head to cover up all my hair, but I don’t want to look like a nerd.
The best thing about it was the way it lit up Wolfie’s eyes and made her look like a devil dog. But the light also caught the leaves on the field in a way that made them look like tin foil, which was confusing. Perhaps the head torch actually lights up the reality of the Matrix we live in.
I will keep experimenting to see if I can make the head torch work. But am open to suggestions of the best way to light night time clearing. I know that traditionally this would all have been done with the naked eye by naked men (women were not allowed to stone clear legally until embarrassingly late - 2007), but times move on, just as the stones ebb and flow in the stocean.
