Wednesday 28 March 2012

Nodding off

I'm something of a champion sleeper - averaging about 10 hrs a day. A casual reader will be able to infer two facts from this:
that I have no children and I don't drink caffeinated beverages. Readers who know me, of course, know that I am just bone idle!


Peaceful lethargy


Spending time in bed
I love days like these
Lying like I'm dead
In peaceful lethargy.
Light a cigarette
Play an old LP
Maybe I'll forget
To get up today.
I have drunk and danced
And taken drugs instead
But given half a chance
I'd rather stay in bed.


Occasionally, however, this very laziness can lead to a seeming paradox: I find myself unable to sleep but unwilling to get up. The classic solution to this is to count sheep. As a child, I remember trying this and not being very good at it. I still don't know if you are supposed to imagine a field full of static sheep and count each one or are you supposed to count them as they move through a gate from one field to a neighbouring one? Both methods have their problems.  In the 'static' scenario - it is very difficult to hold the image in your head whilst you count and in the moving scenario it is very easy to miss one unless you imagine a very narrow gate of the sort more commonly used for humans than livestock. For instance, a sheep could not navigate a kissing gate.




I solved this conundrum by just counting numbers instead. Although after a while I found this a little slow and so started doubling numbers instead.


Slightly off topic, but the highest number in my Penguin dictionary of curious and interesting numbers is Graham's Number. This links to a short description of it that ends with a sort of joke.







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