FEELIN' GROTTY

“Slow down, you move too fast...”

“Please don’t make this moment last…”

Grooooh…! I’m feeling utterly, utterly grotty at the moment. Not exactly ill as such, just really, really run down.

I mean, I know that the insomnia with which I regularly suffer does occasionally catch up with me, but when I was lying there awake the other morning, waiting for the post-equinox twitter of the birds to act as my current alarm clock (as opposed to the internal body clock which had already woken me up anyway by then) and finally indicate that the sun is on the very brink of popping it’s head above the mountain (even if it chooses to coyly hide away behind the clouds for the duration) it seemed as if something else was afoot.

Last night’s healthier option of fish and vegetables seemed to be dancing a merry dance in (if you’ll pardon the “too much information” revelation here) my lower intestine and drawing a lot of my mental attention towards itself as it screamed “I’m here! But I might not be for long!” in the general direction of my autonomic response mechanisms.

(Damn these cheap knock-off circuit boards… I really do need a damn good servicing… and, this time, by a proper mechanic and not the bozos I’ve been using to save my batteries… One of these days I will get around to having them finally fix the “off” switch for my brain because having it forever in “stand-by” mode is getting me down. I don’t know… Brain the size of a planet, etc., etc…)

Still, the moment passed, as it were, and I staggered through my usual morning routine, lugged all of my equipment to the grey box next to the sewage works and set about my day, still a little troubled by the sensations coming from the breadbasket which didn’t seem to want to be calmed by several buckets of instant coffee.

It turned out to be an odd day, not least because I found myself yawning my head off before ten o’clock in the morning, and continued to do so throughout another irritating and tetchiness-inducing working day.

Now, this was unusual. Normally, the insomnia really doesn’t seem to trouble me during the day. I might get a little wobbly and clumsy for a while as I kick-start the morning whilst it’s still dark outside, but once I’ve sipped at my teacup and swallowed my pills, the day seems to stabilise quite rapidly and I can function quite adequately until at least six-thirty in the evening.

The endless insomnia sometimes makes me think that I’m living in a different time zone to the rest of the country. Either that, or else I’m living on a twenty-two hour cycle which is almost constantly out of synch with the rest of the world.

The evenings are another matter all together, and this is why I’m a reluctant socialite who is more likely to be in bedfordshire long before the average toddler might choose to be rather than heading out to paint the town a peculiarly bland shade of grey.

By the time I climbed back into my car and pointed it in the general direction of home, I was feeling a rather bizarre combination of sleepy, yawny, stomachy, snotty, coughy, tight-chestedy, and yukky, a list that might look good as an alternative set of names for Snow White’s friends the dwarves in a pantomime, but feels less than impressive when it’s your own body that they’re describing.

“I think” as I stated at the time “That I may be coming down with something…”