Never so apt a title as when I’m on right-through-the-night shifts, and the sun is blazing and it’s hot (in May! In Scotland!- two years ago there was still snow!*) when I’m trying to sleep.
There are additional hazards; as the good weather inevitably encourages the “top down” drivers to play their music at volume 13. This is bearable when they are just dopplering passed my (tightly closed) window, but, if the traffic lights bring them to a stop right outside (it’s pretty busy junction) generally playing their gangsta rap…
Then there’s the “nice day” temptation, when, having forced myself out of sleep for the drive home , I am awake enough to regret “missing” the delicious cool morning, and tempted to just to enjoy a little time “in the day” (usually fatal).
Related, and doubtless familiar to the shift workers everwhere, the sunshine also reinforces the desire to “be productive” in those intermediate waking moments – I could get -X- done then catch a nap later…. great right up to the revelation that “later” is already too late because it’s time to leave, and absaloutely perilous in 10 hours, when it’s time to drive home (again). Hence I am writing (a guilty day late) in the middle of my night, trying to avoid any suggestion of actually “getting up” and maybe doing a little in the garden…
Yesterday, I took my coach (younger son) to advise on the purchase of more suitable shoes for exercise (my knees are not willing to use the term “running”), as part of the new war on Diabietes. This optimistic purchase is still to be tested in action, but I suspect “hottest day this year” in the middle of sleep time, is not really the moment, no matter what my youthful guide has to say about mental toughness. Anyway, it must be breakfast time (again) as I just got up….
* Locals will know that the nearby Fenwick moor can easilly have snow even when the rest of the country is stricken with drought.
Nexxt week on IaDL: and car alarms…bloody car alarms!….
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 