Restless nights

It has been my second night straight without any sleep and about two or three weeks since I knew a proper night’s slumber. Yes, I have been bitten by the fiendish insomnia bug. The bags under my eyes are now large enough to accommodate all of Mariah Carey’s luggage, and I have changed my Facebook picture to that of a rather attractive-looking donkey. Yes, sleep is a fickle thing indeed.

The romantic in me suggests that during these restless nights I should be true to the writer’s stereotype and sit up until the wee hours of the morning, a double scotch in hand, cat on my shoulder and a shotgun on my lap, hacking away feverishly at the keys, but I don’t drink, the cat can be homicidally averse to being awoken from his carefree night-time slumber and I am sadly lacking in the shotgun department.

It is also challenging to be properly eccentric when you share a house with non-writers. The desire to sit up nights and slump into the horizontal position during the day may oft be looked at askance by the people and children in the house who expect to be fed at regular intervals during the day. Their clothes stand in ridiculously frequent need of washing, hanging and ironing, their dirty dishes pile up in the sink begging to be washed. This is the pitiful impasse of the female writer who is reasonably cognisant that her offspring should preferably not be removed by Social Services.

It is thus that I remain in bed all night, trying hour after dolorous, humdrum hour to find new joints to crack in a reasonably loud and satisfying manner, a myriad of inconsequential and mediocre thoughts stampeding inconsiderately through my echoing cranium. And when the birds begin their pre-dawn song and the call to morning prayer sounds, I may perchance thereafter fall into an inert, dreamless unconsciousness, only to awaken abruptly as the morning’s clamour begins.

To be a truly great writer, one should preferably be a convicted criminal and one should die an honourable writer's death - suicide, syphilis or consumption. I am working myself up towards all of these lofty goals, but in the interim I hope to get some sleep first.