Days without alcohol 8
Well I have indisputable proof that healthy living is bad for you. I've been out carousing and behaving like a cock for the last four months and avoided all the many diseases and lurgies that have struck down almost everyone I know. Then I have a week of eating fruit, going to the gym and avoiding booze and bang - I have a minor illness. Fruit and herbal tea are bad for you. QED. (And a surprising number of you were interested - the liquorice tea is made by - I think- Yogi Teas - like the gurus not the bear - and is a spice blend. Very much recommended for all you flaky tea drinking idiots out there).
The illness is not much, just a bit of a sore throat and a snotty nose, but it's enough to slow me down a bit. In fact I think this slight malady explains my weekend sluggishness because I found it very hard to get out of bed this morning. I know this doesn't necessarily distinguish this morning from any other morning, but I went to bed reasonably early (before 2am) and when my alarm went at 9.30 I couldn't face the world, so I set it again for half an hour hence and went back to sleep.
I was annoyed, therefore, when the radio came on seemingly immediately, waking me up again. In fact it was now 10 o clock and I had obviously immediately fallen into one of those slightly cool, dreamless sleeps where time seems to jump forwards. You close your eyes, are unaware you're asleep, open them what feels like a second later and yet time has passed by. Like some kind of slightly useless time machine.
I like dreaming and would miss it if it never happened, but I like it when you get this occasional missing half hour or night in which you were like a robot who had been turned off mid sentence and then turned on hours later and complete your sentence. Not that I am obsessed with robots or want to be one. And anyone who says I do is lying.
It is very rare that seeming blink between night time and morning (or in this case between morning and slightly later morning). It hardly ever happens to me and the only time I experienced it properly was when I was about six. I was having trouble sleeping at night, shut my eyes and just as I felt I was drifting off, my sister started shouting in the next room. I opened my eyes, furious with her for having disturbed my potential reverie to discover that I had been somehow transported to the next morning. No dreams, no long black nothingness, but the proper robot switched off mid thought, switched on later still having that same thought discombobulation. It was exciting just the once and as an impatient child I hoped it would happen again. Imagine not having to endure the agony of one more sleep until you were on holiday or going to a funfair or just running around in the garden, just turn off, turn on and you're there! It would be a shame to miss out on the fun and terror of dreams and maybe life would fly by a bit too quickly, but at least you'd never get to the stage, like me in my dotage, where I get confused as to whether a thing I remember actually happened or I just dreamed it. This happens a lot. I am not even sure if I am really writing this or whether I am dreaming writing it. I will be annoyed to wake up and find I have to write a whole new entry. Especially as generally the stuff I make up in my dreams seems OK at the time, but when I think back over it it is just stream of consciousness rubbish - insert your own joke here. I can't be bothered to write it myself in case I am only dreaming this.
Have you ever thought that maybe dreams are real and real life is the dream? Wow.
The truth is that dreams are dreams and real life is real life. There is a clue in the words we use to describe each thing. Also at least real life makes some kind of disconnected and bleak sense, whilst dreams are just full of shit.
Like this entry.
I am now so convinced I am asleep I am going to stop writing and try and engineer a fight with a dragon instead. I mean if you end up doing your work in your sleep then you're a really sad case. Or Ben Elton.
Zing! Oh yeah. I am 100% awake. No way am I going to look back on that and think it was rubbish!
I need a drink.
