It’s amazing how much more often you see the wee small hours as you get older.

When I was younger I saw 2am only when I was either a) heading towards the toilet, b) heading towards a crying baby or c) missing a deadline by a few thousand words.  I’ve never slept well, but I’m not much of a night-time prowler either.  Generally I go to bed at night (in preference to the next morning) and I stay there until I get up.  Well, I did…

These days you will far more often find me drinking herbal tea, watching shit on TV and trying to remember what I should have done earlier.  Usually, what I should have done is to have gone to sleep before the men on the television started getting their knobs out for appraisal by someone who, if you’re asking me to be honest, probably would have been much wiser to have kept her own trollies* on.  Somewhere, one of us has something fundamentally wrong with them and if it’s me, I’m not sure that I want it putting right.  But then I remember how old I am and realise that it just doesn’t matter anymore**…

This is the point at which the voices inside my head start to manifest themselves physically: I constantly worry about the state of my teeth and my inability to eat anything with a texture firmer than blancmange (and that only as long as it is not lumpy) without fearing the total collapse of my mouth.  In the small hours my teeth throb in tune with my concerns.  I am acutely aware of all my contemporaries, many of whom are dying around me: usually tee-total, exercise loving folk with healthy diets and an equable temper, and I wonder if sloth, drinking and eating crap might not be all that is keeping me alive – but when I close my eyes, I can hear my arteries hardening, my chest grating and my heart playing a Neil Peart drum solo.  In the middle of the night, staying alive feels like a major achievement.  In the daytime, I am driven along by the ‘practical’, but night time is dominated by ‘theory’ and I begin to conclude that, by rights, I might just be running out of road: the engine is knackered, the suspension shot and there is almost certainly a major leak in the sump somewhere.

These days, I calm myself down by drinking an infusion of some weed or another: camomile is the current favourite although I wouldn’t entirely rule out anything that I am relatively sure has not been piddled on by a dog, if I had any indication at all that it might chase me back to sleep.  “Hemlock?  Why yes, you’ll have the best night’s sleep you’ve ever had.”
“Will I wake up refreshed?”
“Er…”

The worst thing about being awake at this time is that it makes me aware of just how often I am now awake at this time and I have to try and find some way of taking my mind off it if I am ever to find sleep again.  So, where was I?  Oh yes, right then, which vagina would I pick for a date? – definitely not the one that reminds me of Donald Trump’s mugshot – so it will probably have to be the one in the middle that looks vaguely human…

*Underwear

**This little TV aberration is called ‘Naked Attraction,’ a dating program in which the sole criteria for choosing your ‘date’ appears to be the size and shape of your prospective lover’s genitalia which, for no apparent reason, appears to be my TV’s default position at 2am.  Now read on…