Right now, I would love a brandy and ginger. I can smell it and taste it - that wonderful gingery taste with the depth of brandy - smoky, deep, pleasurable - and the effervescent bubbles of the gingerale. To go with that, I would like some thin ginger biscuits. Wafer thin, crisp, almost peppery.
It's 2.30am and I can't sleep. It's impossible having to lie on one's back for 6 weeks while the hip heals. Pillows stacked high, sloping gently down like a ski slope so that my back rests in an almost upright position. Sleeping like this can only be done in two-hour snatches, if you're lucky. Then the desire to turn over becomes unbearable. The pillow, wedged between the knees is there to stop all that. I've managed four weeks out of the six, but each night is like an endurance test. I keep my laptop by my bed, along with my e-reader, and my cellphone. The phone was there originally so that if I needed something when I was too weak to get out of bed without help, I could phone. Theoretically. The one time I tried that system, everyone slept through. However, I don't feel I could use it now for a brandy and ginger, and get away with it somehow.
My back loathes the pressure put on it - whether that's something that has built up during the day as I lunge about on crutches, madly practising my walking skills up and down the steep drive-way and round and round the house, or whether it's just a pressure point from lying awkwardly, I don't know, but it is protesting. My whole body protests, particularly the bladder. It's like some sort of payback time. During the day, bladder is well-behaved and acts normal. Come the night and it demands attention every hour. So the struggle to get out of bed, find slippers, don't bend down, don't twist, don't turn on healing leg, find crutch, get to bathroom, etc etc is a 'mare. Three, four times a night.
By the time I get to sleep - waiting out the non-sleeping hours til the requisite time allowed to take next lot of painkillers - it's dawn and the magpies are starting their chorus out on the lawn. It's my cue to fall asleep before the rest of the household gets up and the dog comes tearing along to jump on the bed.
I looked up quotes for sleep, only knowing one myself: "Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care" which I have always liked (Shakespeare), he goes on:
"The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course
Chief nourisher in life's feast"
Which is a wonderful way to look at sleep - as the second course in life's great feast. Day/Night. Awake/Asleep.
But right now, I see sleep in a crystal goblet of brandy and ginger. How can I magic that up?
It's 2.30am and I can't sleep. It's impossible having to lie on one's back for 6 weeks while the hip heals. Pillows stacked high, sloping gently down like a ski slope so that my back rests in an almost upright position. Sleeping like this can only be done in two-hour snatches, if you're lucky. Then the desire to turn over becomes unbearable. The pillow, wedged between the knees is there to stop all that. I've managed four weeks out of the six, but each night is like an endurance test. I keep my laptop by my bed, along with my e-reader, and my cellphone. The phone was there originally so that if I needed something when I was too weak to get out of bed without help, I could phone. Theoretically. The one time I tried that system, everyone slept through. However, I don't feel I could use it now for a brandy and ginger, and get away with it somehow.
My back loathes the pressure put on it - whether that's something that has built up during the day as I lunge about on crutches, madly practising my walking skills up and down the steep drive-way and round and round the house, or whether it's just a pressure point from lying awkwardly, I don't know, but it is protesting. My whole body protests, particularly the bladder. It's like some sort of payback time. During the day, bladder is well-behaved and acts normal. Come the night and it demands attention every hour. So the struggle to get out of bed, find slippers, don't bend down, don't twist, don't turn on healing leg, find crutch, get to bathroom, etc etc is a 'mare. Three, four times a night.
By the time I get to sleep - waiting out the non-sleeping hours til the requisite time allowed to take next lot of painkillers - it's dawn and the magpies are starting their chorus out on the lawn. It's my cue to fall asleep before the rest of the household gets up and the dog comes tearing along to jump on the bed.
I looked up quotes for sleep, only knowing one myself: "Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care" which I have always liked (Shakespeare), he goes on:
"The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course
Chief nourisher in life's feast"
Which is a wonderful way to look at sleep - as the second course in life's great feast. Day/Night. Awake/Asleep.
But right now, I see sleep in a crystal goblet of brandy and ginger. How can I magic that up?
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