Bedtime Blues - Wednesday

I'm looking at the bedside clock again and it doesn’t seem to have moved from the last five times I’ve rolled over, hoping it might be morning.

I’m contemplating a trip to the bathroom just to break the pattern of tossing and turning and to let the covers cool, but I’m conscious of not waking my wife. Although her steady breathing is starting to become mildly irritating after I’ve huffed and puffed, searching for the comfort of dreamless sleep, for the last two hours.

They say moving house is the third most stressful life event, after death and divorce. I’m beginning to wonder if living those three crisis points, albeit vicariously through third parties’ fractious house sales, is taking its collective toll? I can’t remember the last time I had a blissful, undisturbed night’s sleep.

As my stomach churns and my sciatic nerve throbs, I try to chase some unhealthy anger against a solicitor who is holding up a protracted chain I’ve been fretting over for six weeks, from my mind. I’m betting the virtual call-centre, on-line agents, with their cheap fees and even cheaper service don’t suffer so many disturbed nights.

And now the bladder alarm has gone off, a good three hours before the actual bedside clock is due to pipe inane local radio into my head, doubtless about ten minutes after I finally fall into an exhausted sleep.

‘What time is it?’ Mumbles my wife, as I hobble towards the en-suite, obviously not as mouse-like as intended.

‘Go back to sleep.’ I urge her. No point in two of us being grumpy for the rest of the day. Some rest-deprived area of my mind imagines the solicitor’s grinning features at the bottom of the darkened toilet bowl, as I try to urinate quietly. I don’t actually know the dilatory fool; he’s faceless and not exactly taking the piss - although with the speed he dispatches half-formed sales’ contracts, he actually is….

After a bit of fuzzy-headed confusion and a hint of some collateral splash damage on the floor, I push what I think is the short-flush button. The bowl empties like the Hoover Dam’s sluice gates opening. Not the economy, water-saving bowl evacuation then. That won’t please my wife, or the environmentalists who foisted the hapless Energy Performance Certificates on everyone who wants to sell their home.

Half way back to bed, hands still dripping as I couldn’t find a towel without putting on the light and sending the extractor fan in to full Rolls Royce jet engines spooling up to maximum thrust mode, I halt. Perhaps I won’t be able to shake the problem sale from my head by just clambering back under the over-heated duvet? Particularly as another difficult deal has crept into my consciousness. I decide to do what Englishmen the world over have done for decades, when a problem won’t go away. Make a cup of tea.

Brew cooling alongside me, I tap at my computer keyboard as dawn rises apologetically in the east. Soft light creeping through the curtains as a pre-cursor to what might be another dark day. Not for the first time I curse that inept careers advisor at school. That and my casual approach to studying anything other than the unobtainable girl who sat in front of me in class. I wonder where she is now. I sometimes ponder if I’ll get her matrimonial home to sell, in the inevitable divorce.

As the room brightens further and I send an inane tweet to anyone who is stupid enough to be awake and wanting UK property news, I start to feel sleepy. Thank you God.

Slipping quietly back into, the now soothingly cool covers I close my eyes.

‘Could you make any more noise?’ Asks a cranky voice, hardly brimming with human kindness. Not that quietly then.

‘Go back to sleep.’ I urge her, again. And annoyingly she does, Steady breathing returning in seconds. That’s night-time feeding two children in their infancy for you. 

Just as I pass a hopeful note to the girl in the desk ahead of me, a nasally intrusive voice announces:

‘It’s Wednesday morning and here’s Taylor Swift.’

Shake It Off.

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Upgrade Available - Thursday

‘F**k it.’

‘Not a chance.’ Mumbles a sleepy voice.

‘Not literally.’ I tell my wife, before adding. ‘Are you awake then?’ Which on sleepy reflection wasn’t the smartest response.

‘I am now.’ She replies sourly.

‘What time is it?’ I ask wearily. I have a good idea, as I’ve woken at the same time three night’s running.

‘It’s nearly half-past two and you have your own watch.’ Comes the testy reply. ‘Now go back to sleep.’

Not a hope in hell, I think, as I sigh and clamber out of bed to the sort of feminine groan that used to signal slightly more success than waking your partner, before making a solitary cup of tea.

If I wanted to be picky, I think drowsily as I stumble down the stairs, I’d have pointed out to my wife that her time check was a tad inaccurate. The moment I woke up, praying it was after 6.30am, was 2.22am precisely. Like one of those endless Paranormal Activity movies I’ve been pinging awake at exactly the same time for several days now, but the only levitation around tends to involve lifting inappropriate nighttime snacks from the fridge. Needless to say the suggestion of a fixed camera in the bedroom received a frosty response.

Despite loony ladies’ claims to have ghosts residing in their home - still not a great sale clincher - the only poltergeist I have found is the malicious one in my head. A spectre that has me fretting over sales figures and management accounts at sparrow-fart o’clock. Paradoxically, the more you crave sleep the more elusive it becomes, no matter how dog tired you are.

Tossing and turning doesn’t work for me - particularly the tossing as my wife is a light sleeper - so I inevitably end up sloping downstairs for a piss and a cup of tea. Sadly the bladder seems to be weakening along with the mind.

At first, with the thrill of smoking a brand new car and visiting luxury homes I could aspire to if I hit my targets year-on-year, the thrill of house sales kept me running on adrenalin. No matter how hard I worked, I slept like a log. But slowly, insidiously, like water eroding a rock, the pressure of ever increasing targets and ever increasing responsibility began to take its toll. Now I wake up head spinning like an elderly hard drive. I have a feeling I’ve reached capacity.

‘Open you bastard.’ I mutter, as the ancient PC spins and splutters to life, while my cup of tea cools alongside me. The house is silent as a grave now my two sons have left for university and unless my wife starts snoring it’s going to remain that way - other than the tip-tap of a keyboard - until the radio alarm goes off.

Dilemma. Do I look at my office sales figures and the management accounts, the reason I was cattle-prodded awake at 2.22am, or do I write a blog entry and Tweet a few times to fellow insomnia sufferers? I might even have an anonymous exchange with my fellow realtors around the world. Intriguing, but not likely to pay the mortgage. I open the management accounts - eventually.

I’ve always had the gift of the gab, it’s the reason good sales people are often born performers, but mathematics has remained a foreign language to me. If the calculator hadn’t been invented I’m sure I’d be stacking shelves in a supermarket store somewhere, with the prospect of ending up like one of those grey-haired old men collecting snaking lines of trollies in the car park, when they should be lunchtime drinking and reminiscing.

Whatever the numerical equivalent of dyslexia is, I think I have it. My bean counter boss is a figure-fiddler par-excellence but couldn’t flog a life-raft to a drowning man. They say the meek shall inherit the earth, well they’ll be dull, with halitosis and an accountancy qualification.

My mind rapidly becomes snow-blinded by the blizzard of figures. My ailing computer spews out columns and lines but I’m running a drowsy Windows 2000 in my head.

It just doesn’t add up.

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