13th February 2021

I have not the slightest embarrassment for my ability to sleep at any given opportunity, a gift that escaped my possession for much of my earlier life. Twas a time I would have considered such a practice an absolute waste of time no matter the circumstances, preferring to linger red eyed but woken no matter how unnecessary or inefficient such should prove. When and exactly why this sea change occurred is a vagary beyond easy recollection, but most decidedly recently, or at maximum the last few years.

It do occur, maybe erroneously, that such a sleep phobia can only be the result of an unhealthy fear of missing an event of great import, if not globally then at least personally. A conclusion that points to that most human of failings, thinking every happenstance has meaning, relevance to individual existence, a notion that flies in the face of good logic and imaginable reality.  In truth most events that mold the passage of history are rather innocuous and would rarely alert the most attentive of observers. There again the reasoning for such an unhealthy leaning towards insomnia could also be to do with false pride or unnatural machoistic posturing, a feeling of being that necessarily wakeful Horatius, the watchful Roman captain of the gate so perfectly personified in verse by the first Baron Macauley.

Whatever the cause of the reversal, I am now most happy to the indulge the arms of Morpheus at the slightest drop of a hat, this hastily scribbled narrative itself for example resultant from just such a siesta allowed dream from which I stirred but these few short paragraphs ago. Perfect balance, or at least the semblance of adequate equality is ideal in all things, attentiveness and woolgathering included. I well remember being lectured upon the necessity for eight hours good solid sleep nightly, whether tired or not. Being unfailingly ushered up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire at eight in the evening, mornings habitually commencing earlier during my childhood than is humanly or philosophically required. Would I have recognized then what I understand now, my feet would have skipped upwards delightedly, not dragged so sorrowfully.