Consequently, I got up and crept downstairs for a mug of tea and two ginger biscuits. I have the television on but the sound is turned off. Game wardens in Africa are craning an elephant on to a flat bed truck. I wonder where they are taking her? It must be for her own good.
Now she is coming off the truck. She has been heavily sedated. Now she is waking up in a big steel truck. It's like a prison cell on wheels. Maybe I will never know where she was going because the wildlife programme has switched to a parallel story about penguins on the South African coast. Are there any black people in Africa? This programme suggests not. All the humans in the camera's gaze are earnest whites.
We put up our Christmas tree yesterday and then Shirley decorated it as I absorbed the day's football results. My beloved Hull City lost at home to Shrewsbury Town and defeat always causes my mood to plunge . She remembered that I like green tinsel. As the tree stands almost eight feet off the hallway floor she had to ask me to plonk our fairy on the topmost branch.
Soon after completing this challenging manly task I ordered a meal from our favourite Chinese takeaway - the "New Hing Lung" on Abbeydale Road. I have been going there for over twenty years. During the pandemic their business has doubled in popularity and waiting times have grown. I drove over to collect at six thirty but found myself waiting an extra half hour. I won't be ordering at the weekend again. Still the order was as tasty and wholesome as it has always been. Chicken chow mein, chicken foo yung, sweet and sour chicken, chicken chop suey and egg fried rice - all for thirteen pounds. Incredible value.
It's now six fifteen. I should climb the hairy mountain once more - back to bed to seek sleep's replenishing embrace. However, I am conscious I might disturb my wife of thirty nine years so perhaps I will wait a while longer.
Sometimes I wake up in a strange, sad mood, usually carried over from a dream I can remember in parts. It takes a while to get out of it, but usually by the time I have had my morning coffee and a shower, I am back to my usual self.
ReplyDeleteDo you know what triggered this off?
For the first time this year, I am going to have my own Christmas tree. It is my parents‘ discarded artificial tree, still waiting in my cellar to be carried up, dusted and put together, and then of course the decorating!
Whoopee! You have your own tree - and better than that it is a recycled one.
DeleteIn answer to your question, I can't say here.
Your tree looks great but is that the best place to keep your empties until bottle collection? Well, you should have had a good night's sleep now.
ReplyDeleteFinally finished sleep 2. Glad you spotted my vintage bottles Andrew. Please go here:- https://beefgravy.blogspot.com/2014/08/bottled.html
DeleteThe codd bottle is interesting.
DeleteI hope you manage a better night's sleep tonight YP. It is not much fun to be awake through the wee small hours with your mind buzzing.
ReplyDeleteI finished sleep number 2 at 11am. This will probably affect sleep-readiness tonight.
DeleteI often have bad nights with my joint pain keeping me awake. I usually sit up and read for a bit and then manage to get off to sleep again. I can't offer a solution but I'm guessing your daughter is on your mind a lot.
ReplyDeleteHere's for a good night tonight.
Briony
x
If I was still drinking beer, four pints of Tetleys would have done the trick.
DeleteI have never understood why a team losing a game should have such an effect on a non-participant who has absolutely no part or control in the outcome.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is odd but it is still true. You are lucky that Lewis doesn't have a professional football team - Stornoway Rovers or Eagleton Wanderers?
DeleteThe tree looks very festive YP - Shirley has done a good job.
ReplyDeleteAs a chronic insomniac (2-3 hours sleep max) I can sympathise. I'm told that as we get older we don't need so much sleep, but it's no consolation when you're wide awake at 3 a.m.! No, I don't take an afternoon siesta either!
I'm sure your sleep pattern will soon return to normal.
I have been a good sleeper all of my life CG. Sorry to learn that you are regularly plagued by insomnia.
DeleteIt is probably Kavaan, the lonely elephant you were watching, she has now been moved to a happier place with other elephants. I listen to the radio at night if awake at an ungodly hour something of course impossible for you, but strangely you get more world news at night.
ReplyDeleteKaavan was living in a closed down zoo in Islamabad, in poor conditions, alone since his partner died a few years ago. Cher led a campaign to free him. He was put in a crate and flown to a Sanctuary in Cambodia to live with other elephants last week. Cher travelled with him. If this is the same elephant that Pudding heard about.
DeleteNo. It is not the same elephant ladies. This was an African elephant and the white people were South Africans. Cher was nowhere to be seen.
DeleteI would also listen to the radio in the middle of the night. It can lull one back to sleep.
Hull are having a great season. I know what you mean about a loss deepens the mood. The other ecstatic emotion is that feeling when your team scores.
ReplyDeleteIt's silly isn't it? You must have felt utter delight that Man Utd managed to eke out a draw with Man City.
DeleteWhat would a derby mean with no spectators? I don't think the Champions will come from Manchester this season. Good win for Everton. Perhaps Spurs will win it?
DeleteYes. With Mourinho in charge and a key signing or two in January, it might be Spurs's year.
DeleteI imagine your apothecary has been allowed to remain open during these difficult times.
ReplyDeleteDo you live in Royston Vaisey?
DeleteIt is said of those who come to our village that they'll never leave.
DeleteI'm imagining you watching the television with the sound off, watching the trials and tribulations of an elephant being winched onto a truck by all the white men in Africa, wondering idly what was going on, but not being interested enough to turn up the volume and find out. I am not sure why that struck me as so comical, but it did. My surefire cure for insomnia: start reading a book. I never get more than a few pages into it. Hopefully you sleep better tonight, but if you don't, I hope you come right back here to write about it.
ReplyDeleteYou are right about the style of TV viewing. Pleased you found it funny Debby. Everybody needs a chuckle these days. After writing the post I did go back to bed and managed a further three hours dreaming about serenading a mature woman from Pennsylvania. Oh how we giggled!
DeleteCould this be what you were seeing?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55060433
I hope you're able to sleep better soon. Insomnia is a beast. I mostly had it when I was pregnant.
Thanks Mary. I know of that story involving Cher but the sad elephant I was seeing was definitely an African one.
DeleteI put up our tree yesterday too. I love the lights on the tree, they always seem so festive and brighten up the long, dark nights.
ReplyDeleteWhen I can't sleep I give up and just get up, usually end up baking something. I slept in this morning until 730 which was lovely. No toddler to wake me up this weekend.
Small children can be so demanding. You forget when decades have passed by since you were a parent. I guess that Shirley and I have got this to look forward to very soon.
DeleteI almost always sleep through until my lumi lamp gently wakens me at half six. Unlike Paul who sometimes wakes up about 5.00 a.m. and starts fidgetting. Fidget, fidget, fidget. I tell him to be still, he gets up, and I go back to sleep.
ReplyDelete"Be still my beloved..." or "SHUT THE **** UP PAUL!"?
DeleteI'm sure you can correctly guess which one!
DeleteYou're lucky that you are a good solid sleeper. I wake up many times a night and have trouble getting to sleep. Part of it is from sleep apnea.
ReplyDeleteAlso guilt about all those schoolchildren you whacked with your slipper.
DeleteLovely tree. That Chinese meals sounds lovely but our local takeaway would charge double for that. That's the downside of living in London.
ReplyDeleteWhat? The only downside? Don't forget that Boris Johnson lives there!
DeleteOh, I hate those mornings when I wake early and can't get back to sleep again.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the Chinese place has actually seen MORE business as a result of Covid. That's something we don't hear about much -- businesses that are doing better rather than worse because of the pandemic. Of course they're in the minority.
I wonder if your elephant story was about the one from the struggling zoo in Pakistan that Cher had moved to Southeast Asia? But you said game wardens, so maybe not...
It was an African elephant Steve - somewhere in South Africa in fact. As I say, it was just moving wallpaper as I wrote the blogpost. Of course supermmarkets have been doing really well in the pandemic - as have Amazon of course.
DeleteThe secret for combating insomnia is not to be frightened by it.
ReplyDeleteThere.......enough said
Is that pearl of wisdom from your bestselling "Guide to Life" Soupspoone?
DeleteI hardly ever have trouble sleeping either. But last night for me, too, was hours filled with my chronic head pain and I was awake for hours. But I just cannot stay in bed and try to sleep. So, I got up and went downstairs to my “studio” (the tiny third bedroom) and painted while listening to folk music. Concentration on painting means less concentration on trying to sleep.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about the chronic head pain Mama Thyme.
Delete