Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Time to observe that once again I have demonstrated my essential inability to learn the bleeding obvious. I am tired and need to go to bed and yet I know that sleep will elude me for at least a further hour and a half. A good few days' production of the Kenyan coffee plantations currently swimming around my system has seen to that. Tired but wired, what a combination and not for the first time, either.

I doubt also, that it will be the last, but I can write a variation on this post at the appropriate next time as I have in the past and as I am doing now. If I write it often enough, it may just sink in through my caffeine-soaked brain that I am no longer twenty-five and cannot expect to lace my cardio-vascular system with stimulants, even legal ones, and hope to doze off as if I'd just slugged back nothing more enervating than spring water.

Ho hum.

You, Dear Friend, being my only reader, will remember that I occasionally suffer from bouts of insomnia. Nothing too traumatic, though I confess that I fail to appreciate that when it happens.

Today at work I accidentally started an experiment which, once I realised what was going on, I continued deliberately. During the morning I drank my strong coffee as usual, but just after lunch, I accidentally switched to decaff by dint of not paying attention to what I was doing. Once it did sink in, I decided to continue with it, and eschew any caffeine until tomorrow morning. There were a couple of quite astounding yawns after four o'clock - and by astounding, I mean real jaw dislocators, but no other obvious side effects (I have been known to start dozing when filled to the gills with caffeine).

Once I got home tonight, I came up and fiddled with the computer for a while and then put the radio on to listen to the football commentary on Radio 5 Live. In the event, I didn't hear much of it, and dozed off, missing the first 10 minutes or so of Medical Investigation on Five, and forgot to put a tape in for Life on Mars. Oh well, never mind.

Anyway, I went downstairs and put the oven on for some dinner, and then in to watch the rest of Medical Investigation followed by Prison Break or whatever it is called.

Somehow in this period, without giving it much conscious thought, I found that I had quaffed two largish mugs of strong coffee. And mighty fine they were, too.

But now, at just before five to midnight, I have my headphones on, and am grooving¹ to Feng Shui by the Ozric Tentacles with no obvious sign of tiredness.

I may have erred...

¹My use of this term is entirely the fault of telemeister. Blame him.

Earlier this afternoon I popped out of the office for a smoke and to call my niece who had tried to get me on the phone while I was in a meeting. My jacket was still over the back of my chair, so quite what the rest of the office thought when the air suddenly filled with the Doctor Who theme tune, God alone knows.

Anyway, I managed to get hold of her for a brief chat – she has informed the police of the little difficulty she is having with her ex, and they have advised her to hold off a while to see if he responds to reason. After that they are prepared to go and put the fear of Jebus into him.

Phone call over, and cigarette alight, I was musing about the fact that I had run out of coffee again¹, and plotting a route to Sainsbury’s around the corner so I could get there and back with anew jar of instant before I was too badly missed at work. Of course, it was only after I’d given this rather intense thought, that it occurred to me that I was standing looking at the new Marks and Spencer food hall that has recently opened about 10 yards from our offices. Ah, the combined and powerful influence of habit and a low-wattage brane.

So now I have a new jar of Marks & Spencer’s own brand Italian style rich roast coffee.

It is marked with the number 4 for strength. It doesn’t tell you out of how many, so you have to guess. I still don’t know for certain, but I am guessing it is 4 out of 5; maybe 4 out of 4. Either way, I don’t need to put the customary two heaped teaspoons in the mug while I have this stuff.

Now the next step. Find something to prise my tongue from the roof of my mouth, to which it cleaved halfway through the first sip, and from where it refuses to budge of its own accord. Trust me when I say that a tongue can go rigid with catatonia while the rest of you is surfing the caffeine high. I currently sound like John Mills as the village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter.



¹ No, the old stereotype of the jolly, fat lady coming around the office with the tea trolley and iced buns is out of date and inaccurate – even if it was once otherwise. We don’t even get coffee subsidised like some do in private industry. The best we have is a tea point for hot water, and fridge to keep the milk cold. We have to buy our own comestibles, thank you.