At last, something of substance!

  Actually, you’d better be the judge of that. Reviews of this entry should be written on the back of a stamp (simply ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ will do), which you must stick on the forehead of the next person you see asleep. Do it or die. So anyway, hopefully this should turn out to be a large volume of text with a low density of content.

  So anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, my sleeping habits are shocking. It’s a good thing that I could get away with minimal attendance at university, because I quite frankly wasn’t awake for most of it. Things have been getting particularly bad recently. A few days ago I tried sticking it out until the evening, but failed miserably – I passed out on the sofa sometime around noon while my friends watched Formula 1, only waking up long enough to get to bed, safe from any eyebrow-shaving schemes they might have been formulating. This was really an apalling performance, considering I’d only woken at five the previous afternoon, which I can only put down to the exhausting sunlight and the unreasonable boringness of the day in general. I had actually gotten a bit of sleep before then – I’d attempted to go to sleep at about four in the morning, but was rudely awoken about five minutes later by excessive head and light, the latter being barely obstructed by my blind at all; even less with the window open, as it had to be due to the intolerable heat (living in the roof, the blind is attached to the window, which opens upwards, meaning that if the window is open, I am necessarily exposed to the outside world and whatever it has to throw at me). This was shortly followed by the builders, who seem to work exclusively in the early morning. Within the hour I’d decided that sleep was an outrageous prospect, and that by the time I’d be exhausted enough to sleep through such conditions it’d be late enough that sleeping would no longer be a good idea. This is why I attempted to stay awake.

  Anyway, I awoke at about nine that evening, and decided that things were really getting out of hand. I arsed around for the night, then decided that I needed to do some shopping, and that I ought to do it before I got too tired. I often intend on going shopping only to realise that the shops have closed, especially on a Sunday, which is what it was (I haven’t mentioned the actual day on which most things happened because, to be honest, I’m not sure what they were. It’s very easily to get disorientated when the days aren’t separated by sleep). On this particular occasion, I was actually there too early. We were let into the shop, but apparently they couldn’t actually sell us anything until eleven because of Sunday trading laws. I finished my shopping at about a quater to, so I went to stand at one of the checkouts. After a few minutes the shelves I happened to be looking at appeared to be drifting backwards and forwards, or perhaps lengthening and shortening in an unnervingly organic manner, not entirely dissimilar to breathing. Things appeared to be getting to me. This was a bit strange, because I’d been awake for less than fourteen hours, which people do all the time. I imagine erraticism played some part in it, but it was still a bit weird. Anyway, they finally allowed us to give them their money (which was at five minutes to eleven, the goddamn law-breakers), and I made my way back to the flat. Things were relatively boring for a while, until I decided that I needed to make myself some food. I was in a bit of a strange predicament: to me it was evening, but it was decidedly daytime outside. It just seemed wrong to be having a proper meal. I can quite happily have cereal when I wake up in the evening (or at any time of day and any time between my waking and going back to sleep), but there was something telling me that to eat a proper cooked meal at this hour would be weird. A lot of people have a proper meal for lunch, but it still seemed strange for me. Anyway, I decided that, despite my reservations, I was going to go for it. I went to the kitchen, and everything suddenly seemed smaller than it should be, or perhaps slightly further away. It’s a strange sensation which I’ve had before. It’s quite subtle, and I’m not sure exactly what’s behind it, but things like this intrigue me and I have to say that I quite enjoy the experience of the real world not seeming quite right somehow.

  I found three turkey escalopes in the fridge which were on the verge of going out of date. Eating these, I decided, would not only be pleasant; it would be downright necessary, in the name of efficiency. I also had an almost-finished back of chips in the freezer which were just taking up room. It was not until I put this into the oven that I realised that three escalopes alone is a stupid amount. But they were in the oven now, so I might as well give it a go. I did manage to finish it, although it was a struggle. Ted, whose pizza my food had shared the oven with, barely managed to get half way through his dinner, which consisted exclusively of the aforementioned pizza. I may be a pig, but that man is a little girl (no offence to the little girls with perfectly healthy appetites out there).

  Not a lot happened for the next few hours. I had been hoping to get a couple of hours’ sleep and then be up again for the evening, so that I’d be tired enough to get to sleep at a proper time like one or two, but in the end I got waylaid doing largely pointless things and talking to largely pointless people (HA!), and by the time I actually resolved to get some sleep it was too late, and if I had, waking up a couple of hours later would either have been a downright painful occasion, or simply would not have occurred at all. I was extremely tired by then, and fully expected to pass out at any minute. I did actually drift off a few times whilst working through some terrible online test, but it was only few a few moments at a time, and I was eventually snapped out of it by some music suddenly starting (hurrah for secret tracks!). For the next couple of hours, I felt surprisingly alert. Eventually, however, I started to get tired again, and at about midnight I decided to finally go to bed. I had been awake for something like twenty-seven hours. I’ve been awake for the best part of two days in the past, but such cases have always involved some sort of nap part-way through. I’m sure a lot of people have pulled off a lot more impressive feats, too, but I was still quite pleased with myself. And the important thing was that, at nine this morning, I woke up. Granted, this was because I’d forgotten to close the blind and light had filled my room, and granted, I eventually fell back to sleep for two more hours, but before I did I felt strangely serene. It was partly tiredness, and partly the fact that, whilst it was bright, it wasn’t burningly so (something which I find unpleasant), making the bare walls of my room vaguely aesthetic, which of course is quite unusual. And there was the sense of victory. But mainly tiredness. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be back into my old habits in time for my final exam on Friday, and when I properly woke up at eleven I felt quite rotten, but it was nice while it lasted. I have to say that the first half of the day is massively overrated, though. Absolutely fuck all happens. It’s pointless.

  I had a couple of other topics lined up for discussion in this entry, but however proud I may feel of a nice big long entry, they seem to put people off a little, and it would make much more sense for me to string these out, thereby keeping me in the most recently updated list and ‘hopefully’ attracting some more of you plebeians to this most hallowed shrine to my brilliance.
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