I Did What?

When we arrived at Judy's a week ago last Friday it was early evening.  We had dinner and a catch-up by which time it was about 9.45 pm.  The girls decided this was time for bed with our early start the next morning.  However as it was about three hours before my bedtime I was reluctant to go but I decided to take my Kindle to bed and have a read because I had no internet access.   I was in bed just before 10.  Half an hour later and not having read a word I woke up just as I hit the floor having fallen from my sitting-in-bed position.  My first thought - after surprise at finding my head just about to hit the floor - was to play the Glad Game.  If it had been my laptop on my knee instead of the Kindle it might have been a disaster.  

The next morning I told the girls to give them a laugh.  To quote one of my favourite film lines "Big mistake!".  I spent a couple of days being asked by people on the lawns if I'd fallen out of bed recently!  Some people are so indiscreet.  That's just not the sort of thing I want anyone to know.

Sitting in Bed

Sometimes late at night I like the idea of going to bed and sitting with a book or, more realistically, Samantha, on my knee and reading or writing.  In practice it rarely works because I have never been one for reading in bed and I tend to put my head on the pillow and fall asleep within a minute of doing that.  Just occasionally I remain awake long enough to do something for a few minutes, such as take a photo of what I see when I sit up in bed at night.

 

A Different Perspective

Sunday morning and just after eight o'clock. "What" I ask myself "am I doing sitting in bed with my second cup of Green Tea with Lemon, writing emails and now my Blog posting?" The answer is partly that I'm still not 100% and sitting up in bed should make me feel that I am looking after myself and helping the healing process, and partly curiosity. I will elaborate on the latter point.

I you are reading this and you are married then you probably sleep in a double bed and on the same side as you have always slept with your current partner. The chances are too that if you are not living with someone you still sleep in a double bed. I bet that unlike Diane Keaton in a film she made with Jack Nicolson (the name of which at this moment I cannot recall) you do not sleep in the middle of the bed. And, finally, whichever side you sleep on I bet that it is always the same one.

Why is this? Anyway it has one big advantage. Last night in trying to shake off this bug I went to bed early and woke just after midnight in a pool of perspiration which, had I been in a single bed would have necessitated a change of bedclothes. Sleeping in a double bed meant that that could be put of until the morning because I had a 'spare' side to which to move. Which is, of course, what I did. But when one wakes again in the night and stretches for the box of tissues it's not there. In fact nothing is where it should be. I don't know about you but I find that very disorientating (or is it disorienting?). Of course if there is no moon or it is overcast there is absolutely no light here. The bedroom is pitch black and absolutely silent. Even the red figures of the digital clock are dimmed and in the distance and, as it happens, were obscured by a pillow in line of sight.

So when I got up this morning and made a cup of tea I realised that if I came back to bed I would, of course, be on the 'wrong' side of the bed. Would that be significant? Well, no, nothing in my world would be likely to alter. But curiously that's not proved to be absolutely correct. I am sitting here with the 'French' window onto the deck wide open and the sun streaming in at floor level. (The deck itself gets sun during parts of the day even though the roof overhang prevents the sun actually hitting anything other than the bottom part of my bedroom window first thing in the morning). The birds incredible calls (and this is just ordinary morning chatter - the dawn chorus is long past) are vying with Elgar's Piano Music for the attention of my brain's aural receptors. But what is significant is that I am looking at a view that I have never looked at before because I always look at the view outside the Cottage from a different perspective. And I can now see things which I can't see from the living room or from the other side of the bed or even from the table out on the deck.

There is always another perspective on life.