What happens when you're knackered?

Well ....... Goood Eeeeeeevening VietBlog!!!

'S bin a while, some weeks actually. Not had much inspiration for blogs recently. The news has been disastrously predictable ... Tony and Gordon Show, Iran, Iraq, Terrorism yada-yada. Yawn!

Actually been doing a lot of that recently ... yawning that is. Having just come off my first all night stint for a quite a while, I'd forgotten the peculiarly bizarre effect fatigue can have on the body. Not being 23, snorting interesting white powders, popping pills, or generally overdosing on any caffeine based substance I still managed to make it through the night and most of the way through the following day before admitting defeat and going home for a rest.

But a 30 hour stint can take its toll and it is interesting to note how many ways I found of effectively shutting off. For example, sitting in the chair half my brain would shut down, with the result that I felt I was slipping sideways. It was after a couple of vertiginous episodes like this, despite my best efforts at concentrating on the task at hand, I decided that riding a litre or so of motorbike 40 miles home might not be such a good idea. I reverted to primitive train man - still at 3 in the afternoon there's plenty of space and seats were easy to come by.

Another trick of the brain, trying to subvert my attempts to work, meant that entire minutes would disappear without my noticing them. Just gone, vapourised, vanished. Specks of my life, obliterated without trace. OK, so I was just sitting in front of a screen, so no harm done. But if this had been some critical task, what then?

Of course, when I allowed myself to shut down - on the train - I managed to lose large swathes of time, no problem. Not quite sleep, but a half consciousness. Now that is weird stuff. Not that sleep deprivation is mandated to reach this state - there appear to be a fair number of people who are permanently like this, many of them behind the wheel of a car in the mornings. But, the strange thing is the brain's ability to respond to salient input whilst ticking over - like train inspectors, proximity to home and livid green cycle suites. Near instantaneous ability to respond appropriately, yet able to return quickly to a quiescent state. That's quite a handy trick to have in one's arsenal. I think it's a trick I'll need to develop further for those tedious meetings.

And, when I was finally able to get my head on a bed. PHONE CALL!!!!! Aieee Karamba!!! What? where?!! Wow, was I confused. Whole seconds passed before I was able to re-orient myself. That, and the irrational, immediate reaction to a) fling the phone out of the window and b) find the individual responsible and encourage them towards a long term career pushing up daisies. Fortunately the homicidal stage didn't last too long, most of the people in immediate vicinity have survived without serious or life threatening injury, but that flash of anger. Interesting - as Spock would have said.

Still, awake now, moderately sane and scribbling this blog (OK, maybe that's an oxymoron) I'm good for another few hours before I'll need to crash. All this on less than 2 hour's sleep throughout - makes me think, how much sleep is really necessary, how quickly does the debt become too great and what happens when it does. (Yes I know there are books on the subject - but it's the individual response I'm really interested in)

Well, that's about it for now. It's a bit random - no social comment, no cynical dismemberment, just the story of tired bloke. Go figure.

Birthdays

Well here we are in September, and apart from the fact that all the schools have gone back and the roads are now cluttered with mothers and their precious kids doing the 300metres from their house to the school, this is birthday month. Now a few seconds thought about timings indicates quite quickly why there is a preponderance of birthdays around this time of year. And it would appear that this particular family and associated psuedo-relatives is no exception. The first week alone has 4, though one has demised so we don't tend to celebrate that one explicitly. But the others all require cards and of course some celebratory gift. Woe betide you should you happen to forget! The rest of the month is merely host to another 3 or 4 birthdays, but at least there is a short space in which to catch ones breath between them. What madness!

My mind is drawn to that timeless children's tale by Lewis Carrol; Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter's concept of celebrating unbirthdays. The consequence of this could be that all the celebrations tail off into meaningless blur - where one day is undifferentiable from the next. Or maybe it should be interpreted another way - that every day is worth celebrating, and that to save it all the joy up for a single day in the year is madness. So it's make your mind up time ... just how mad was the Mad Hatter? And a very happy unbirthday to you too!

Christmas

Annual rant.

WTF are they doing putting Chrismas cards and wrapping paper in the shops now! It's the end of August you bunch of wazzocks, Christmas is months away. Do I want to see the same banal selection of Christmas cards for the next 5 months, No! No, I damn well don't! Nor do I want it thrust down my throat everywhere I look. Are we such a sad bunch of f*$ks that we have to start looking forward to the next festival 5 months before it arrives? Is there nothing else in peoples lives but the next celebration. And after Christmas, it's Easter again!

Get a grip! If people want to buy Chrsitmas cards and such then a month or so is ample time. If they are the sort of people that are that well organised they will have brought next years cards and paper in the previous year's sales at a quarter of the price. Want to know a secret? I don't think I would recognise that it was last year's card design. Want to know something else ... I wouldn't care if it was. Nor would I care if I'd received one previously. Somehow the thought behind it seems more important.

Oh yes, the sales ... they used to start after Christmas, but now strangely start before. That would be because some bright spark noticed that people would put off buying stuff at full price when they could buy the exact same item for significantly less if they were prepared to wait an extra 3 days! I have a radical new idea. Why not charge what the item is worth? No 'sale' required. Just provide the goods at a fair price, not hiked up to exploit a fad, but just a reasonable price. Another idea ... design stuff that doesn't have a fashion shelf life of 15 minutes. The worst examples of this are in womens' clothing where by the time you've bought the goods they are out of date. A new line is being hung on the rails as you depart. But, aside from womens clothing there are plenty of other examples of short term fadism, take a look around.

With one breath we are being preached at to conserve energy, and with the next exhorted to buy new X, buy, new Y, because A and B are now so passé. No wonder we have a confused angry generation growing up, the messages they are getting are so mixed you could put it in the oven and bake them as a cake. Of course you' d have to take it out early so it would be only half baked.

A friend of mine used to recycle his Christmas cards. He'd sign and date them and return them the following year. Some cards lasted five or six years this way. Seems like a good idea to me.