AT this time of year, you’d expect me to put forth a few uplifting words. Drink, telly, chips. Well, that’s me out. What you got? Same? Well, there ye are.

Actually, here’s another one: sleep. Yes, that cheered you up. Surveys show we value sleep more than life itself. So what happens on this earthly paradise, dear readers? Correct. Sleep eludes us.

Many folk get around five hours a night, the lucky sods. You’d certainly think that, in the last year, folk would be getting hardly any Z’s, what with mutants, pandemics an’ a’ that.

And yet it says here – study by Brown University in the US – that the pandemic is allowing people to sleep more. I can’t believe this is because they’re having a night of untroubled sleep.

Indeed, it’s because they’re sleeping later, taking advantage of time formerly spend trauchling into the workplace, washing themselves and getting dressed. I haven’t done any of these things for years. Load of nonsense.

Ever intent to rise early, I set the alarm. But I wake in the middle of the night and remain so for hours. On days when I don’t have much work – basically Monday to Friday, with weekends off – I just re-set the alarm for some time in the afternoon and, thus, tend to get my regulation four hours in the end.

A sleep of two halves is nothing new. Another study recently claimed it was an ancient norm, with people in medieval times using the break productively, making soup, reading a woodcut, watching the tapestry if there was anything on, or engaging in lewd and libidinous behaviour.

I don’t believe that thesis. Apart from being hanged, tortured, and working a seven-day week, they didn’t know what stress was. Their work in the fresh air would surely have knackered them. When I was a garden labourer, I slept like a baby.

But I was young then and, apart from the odd instruction in October to get all these leaves swept up by Christmas, didn’t know what a deadline was.

As a professional intellectual nowadays – shut up, youse – my mind is always working overtime. It’s my brain: it gets on my wick. Lying awake in the peerie wee hours, I start working out how much money I’d save by giving up fruit; greetin’ out of self-pity; promising God I’ll be a better person if he lets me sleep; warning God that, if He is there then when I die, He’s getting decked.

But, most of the time, I listen to audiobooks. I use them at the start of the night too and, oddly enough, am usually asleep in under a minute. But they don’t work so well in the middle of the night. I put them on to take my mind off existential problems, ken?

Last night, in order of literary merit, I listened to Star Wars: Heir to the Empire; The Two Towers (Book 2 of The Lord of the Rings, as you know); Virgil’s Aeneid; A Christmas Carol (read by John Gielgud); and Five on a Treasure Island (don’t judge me).

I don’t listen to these all the way through. I set a timer for 15 or 20 minutes and, if I’m still awake when that switches off the audio, I try something else.

Other night-time stand-bys include Dad’s Army, Dick Barton – Special Agent, The Wind in the Willows, and The Moomins. Sometimes, I worry that, if I do get to sleep with one of these on, my subconscious will absorb them.

Indeed, it’s not unusual for me to wake up shouting: “Bah, humbug, don’t tell him your name, Mole, someone’s shining a light on that island, they shall not pass, shut up, ya wookie galoot!”

The days all go downhill after that. It’s the worst part of life really: being awake and conscious. So, let us all pray for more sleep in 2021. G’night, all.

Mingin’ in the Rain

I’M drawn to rainy places. But even I must admit that, day after day, dreich drips dropping from dull grey skies get you doon.

Where I live, if you’ve outdoor tasks to perform, you must drop any other activities as soon as there’s a break in the drizzle, and get yourself oot there.

That said, and while I don’t want to sound a controversial note, I’d rather an excess of rain than none at all. Some places are so dry folk cannot grow a tattie. That is monstrous.

During a seemingly endless sunny spell last spring, I longed for a splash of rain. I’m also a creature of wind – I speak, madam, of matters meteorological – so that it’s as well I live in Scotia.

I do not, however, live in Brigadoon, so it was unsurprising to learn that makers of the film by that name decided Scotland was too wet when looking for a location. A bit ironic, as our report pointed out, as star Gene Kelly’s biggest hit was Singin’ in the Rain.

The ethereal highland village only appears for one day every 100 years. And it would be cruel, if on that one blessed day, it was teeming doon in Brigadoon.

BBC now fine by me

I AM conflicted. I might even say I am penitent.

Surprisingly able to watch the Scottish Cup Final last Sunday, and after exchanging post-match observations with friends online, I kept the BBC channel on – something I never normally do – and found myself watching Countryfile and Antiques Roadshow, which I hadn’t seen (perhaps appropriately) for years.

They were excellent. It wasn’t just the quality. There was something cheering about them. Not seeing much television now, I’d forgotten there was a whole other world out there in Britain, and a decent one.

Recently, I’ve been critical of the BBC licence fee but, much more of this and I might find the £13 a month value for money.

My New Year’s resolution will be to get my telly sorted so that I can rejoin the human race. As regular readers know, I only have access to the iPlayer, and could never see any BBC One Scotland programmes on that.

However, last weekend, I found that, if I went to the dreaded “settings”, I could change the location from the default “London” to “Scotland”. It was very satisfying. If only constitutional matters were as simple.

Rumpy-pampas

THE world of rudeness continues to pass me by. Once, on another newspaper, I used a word I’d heard on the Fry and Laurie comedy TV show, and which I’d thought they’d made up, as they were wont to do.

Alas, it transpired it was a term for some bawdy, and to me unimaginable, activity involving people’s posteriors. Even now I can’t remember what it was and, thankfully, the word eludes me too.

I was informed of my faux pas in a call from a laughing editorial executive reading my copy pre-publication. After my initial mortification, it occurred to me to ask: “How could you possibly know such a thing?” I guess his lexicon was bigger than mine.

This week, I learned that pampas grass in a garden signified that the householder was into wife-swapping, as it was known back in the Seventies.

I hope I’ve not discombobulated any pampas grass owners among you who were similarly out of the loop, as it were. Turns out it was an urban myth anyway.

Still, you might like to hang a notice on yours explaining that the plant’s purpose is purely horticultural.

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