I seem to have forgotten how to sleep. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I went to bed, fell asleep, and woke up refreshed the next morning without several hours of tossing, turning, pillow-mashing and teeth-gnashing in the interim. I’ve always been a light sleeper (see examples of my NINJA-LIKE ALERTNESS here and here), but this is getting ridiculous: if someone in the next building so much as imagines the sound of a paperclip dropping to the floor I am instantly awake; and as you can probably guess, on a main thoroughfare in London the sound of imaginary paperclips hitting parquet flooring is very low on the list of nocturnal noise. I could leave a tape recorder on my windowsill at night and make an album called ‘Non-Soothing Sounds of Non-Nature: Shouting Drunks and Police Sirens’ (very comforting for the city mouse disconcerted by all the silence on a country holiday).
I’ve never had any real trouble sleeping before this, and it’s throwing me for a loop. On top of the exhaustion, lying awake for hours on end is fucking tedious as hell. I refuse to get up and do something because that is admitting defeat, though after half an hour or so I usually resort to tickling SiC’s face to watch him flail around in his sleep (sorry honey!); after an hour I start swearing and kicking the duvet in frustration, causing SiC to make vague sympathetic noises whilst waiting patiently for me to drift off so he can smother me with a pillow (fortunately for me he can never stay awake long enough).
I think this is probably stress-related: after two-plus years of moving, finding new jobs, moving, drinking too much, moving, making new friends, moving, getting married, moving, dealing with immigration, moving, temping, finding new jobs, moving, etc, I think I’ve forgotten how to be not stressed. (My patented relaxation technique is as follows: apply gin. Repeat as required. Effective, but not always convenient.)
And there is no end in sight! I’m temping again. I’m in Camden this time, which is super-cool, but which means I have to take the Silverlink to work if I don’t want to be on the Tube for an hour (ironic since I could walk to Camden in less than that). The Silverlink is inexpressibly more aggravating than the Tube: slow, juddering, filthy, never ever EVER on time, and always packed with screaming teenage chavs and their screaming offspring. Yesterday on my daily commute, whilst gritting my teeth and jamming my iPod headphones as far into my ears as possible, I thought up a few possible slogans for the Silverlink:
Silverlink: what is ‘service’, anyway?
Silverlink: it feels so good to get off!
Silverlink: have you smelled poo today?
I think I’m going to start asking that question to random people on the street as though I’m trying to sell something. “Excuse me, ma’am! Have you smelled poo today?”