One of the inescapable signs of my own personal ageing process, apart from the obvious ones like grey hairs, wrinkles and the total inability to tolerate any form of human idiocy, is insomnia. It’s a horrible thing, insomnia. Nothing else is quite like it. It is the only thing which deprives you of a night’s sleep thus rendering you good for absolutely nothing at your work the following day and yet which you cannot, with good conscience, use as a justifiable excuse for not turning up to work the following day. “I’m not coming in today because I didn’t sleep very well last night” sounds very weak and is unlikely to result in any sympathy. Whereas “I’m not coming in today because I broke my ankle running for a bus in platform heels when I was drunk” is much more believable, in spite of the fact that at least when you were having insomnia you were in fact in your bed, (and presumably sober, since when was the last time you got mangled and couldn’t sleep like a hibernating bear afterwards and often in the most unusual places?) and at least trying to get some sleep before you had to go to work, which is a much more responsible state of affairs for an employee. You would think.
Lots of people have cures for insomnia. Mine is to imagine that I have won £150 million on the lottery, and then work out what I would do with all that money. It usually goes a bit like this:
1) I will not move house. You can’t make me. I don’t want a bigger house. I can’t even keep this one clean. And yes, I know I will have a huge pile of cash with which to pay someone else to keep it clean, but a lottery win will not change the fact that I am Scottish and thus morbidly tight – why would I pay someone money to do something that I can do myself? And anyway, big houses give me the creeps. Big houses have many more corners than small houses in which creepy things, both human and arachnoid, can hide. Why would I want that?
2) I will, however, consider buying another house with enough space for me to install a swimming pool and a football pitch. Or, heck, I may just buy a swimming pool and a football pitch. Or I might buy the house next door, flatten it (sorry Netta) and build a swimming pool and a football pitch there. No real need to apologise to my lovely neighbour though, as I will have already given her a huge cheque just because she’s nice and she pulls my curtains and puts my lights on when we’re away on holiday. And possibly to make up for the fact that I am the world’s worst and most forgetful cat-sitter and she STILL trusts me enough to look after the poor neglected creature when she goes away on holiday. It’s a good thing cats can fend for themselves, food-wise, and cannot tell tales. That’s all I’m saying.
3) I will make all my friends and family millionaires, as long as they agree never to mention it again, and promise not to be grateful because I would hate that. We would have to have some sort of contractual obligation not to show any gratitude. I am going to need a clever lawyer.
4) Little Vulture will get enough money so that she can retire extremely early (ie now. I mean, why wait?) and spend the rest of her living moments not worrying about Mr Osborne stealing her pension, taking photos of exotic wildlife in hot places, and coming home every so often to show me the photographs. Her, not Osborne – I have no wish ever to see his photographs. However, if she shows me any more close up photos of moths or stick insects, or once more hides a gigantic moth’s wing in an innocent looking notebook, I reserve the right to withdraw all her funds immediately. Moths are my problem area, as she well knows. And telling me they’re pretty is not helpful. They are not pretty – they are hairy, creepy and get stuck in my hair. What WAS she thinking.
5) Lioness will get enough money that she can direct her fabulous business from behind a pair of sunglasses and a margarita on a poolside sun-lounger, and can fly home on a private jet once a month to pick up a box of Cadburys supplies and have a decent Chinese take away.
6) Bear will get enough money to buy his dream home and pay some muscle to go and sort out either a) the seven circles of hell that is the English house-buying system or b) the total hairballs who keep gazumping him or suddenly deciding to withdraw from the whole process at the very last minute, just because they can (see item a) for reference). And he will be so pleased that he will sell me his black labrador’s MOST beautiful puppy from her next litter for insanely competitive mates’ rates (ie for free).
7) Judge will get his 5-a-side football pitch, his on-site swimming pool and his tri-annual skiing holidays.
8) Boxer will get her asymmetric bars, her horse and her tri-annual skiing holidays.
9) My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Jolly Boy and Malnu-Trisha, will get enough money to pay for their house in Florida, their Majorcan riding holiday and someone to take that confounded holly bush they hate so much off the front wall of their house.
10) Engineer and I will buy a house in France a stone’s throw from a fabulous boulangerie. Enough said. We will also buy the house next door to the house which Jolly Boy and Malnu-Trisha buy in Florida, since my family’s level of enjoyment of a holiday seems to be strongly correlated to the presence of their family on that holiday.
11) Horrifically, there are 30-somethings who are in gainful employment and still cannot afford to buy a house these days. Thus I will purchase a house for Boxer and a house for Judge, so that I do not have them still living under my roof in 25 years’ time when Engineer and I want to go to our French boulangerie house but don’t quite trust them not to have an Empty* whilst we are away and trash the place. Better that they trash their own places.
12) Engineer will let me have a black Labrador puppy, because I will have given up the job which gets in the way of my leisure time, and instead I will be walking my dog, writing my blog, and cleaning all my sodding houses.
13) I will probably need to keep enough money aside to pay for liposuction and other weight-loss-related surgical procedures on a regular basis in order to stop me from becoming a human balloon (see item 10 above). On the other hand, it looks like I will have a fair number of houses to clean and animals to exercise, so maybe that will help to keep the weight off.
*An Empty, for those who were not brought up in Glasgow, is a party which takes place in someone’s house when word gets around that their parents are away for the weekend. It almost always ends in disaster because someone always figures out how to break into the carefully locked drinks cabinet.
Well. A person can dream, can’t she?
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