Birmingham weekender; Rachel’s 18th

This weekend we travelled down to old Birmingham for Rachel’s 18th birthday party. Rachel is Louise’s niece and somehow managed to convince her parents that it was a very good idea to let her hold the party at their house. This insanity was somehow validated by Rachel’s numerous friends all being delightful, polite and generally lovely.

Of course, put that many 17 & 18 year olds in close proximity to alcohol and there’s bound to be casualties: the first was at just 10 o’clock, as one girl passes out in the loo and gets carried upstairs to lie down. Lightweight. And after that we had lots of staggering and very polite drunkeness. Oh, the joys of being young! We were with all the family and the old folk inside the house, whilst the young people wandered between the gazebo in the garden, the toilets and the drinks.

One strange thing about all these teens; despite having beers and stupidly coloured alcopop things in the gazebo, a hell of a lot of them ended up raiding the bottles of spirits in the kitchen. So at half eleven I ran out of Gin. Luckily, Rachel has an older sister and Helen had a secret stash of Gin. Thank you Helen (your replacement bottle shall be with you soon).

Molly had a great time, was pronounced cute many, many times and rather enjoyed both the attention and staying up until 1am. Thanks very much to Rachel and family for the lovely night. I imagine they spent today clearing up the wreckage left by that many teenagers, no matter how nice!

The rest of the weekend was spent catching up with folks and visiting Birmingham. As usual, this meant a visit to Nostalgia & Comics. Lovely to see folks again and nice to actually spend some time browsing comic shelves for good stuff. Had to be very strong this time and try not to grab too much stuff. The grand plan of trying to reduce the 30+ books to review on the shelf. Did alright as well, only added four more things to the shelf.

A busy weekend but a very good one. Happy Birthday to Rachel and thanks very much for inviting us all.

And the G&T just ran out…

Incredibly I’ve finished the big bottle of Gin that I got for my birthday. There was a time that the bottle would probably see me through to the next birthday.
Not anymore.
Oh dear.

Is this really the best time to be doing sleep experiments?

After a few weeks now of seeing my sleep patterns get even more fucked up than they usually are I have decided to take action.
Now, seeing as it’s only a few weeks to the end of term (3 weeks, 2 days – not that we keep count or anything), I’m not entirely convinced that this is a clever move and we shall obviously see, just so long as I don’t run the car into a tree on the way to work through sleep dep.

One thing this is useful for is explaining to Louise what the hell I was doing still up at half 5 this morning when she got up to get ready for work. Instead of trying to explain myself at that time of the morning I can just tell her to read the blog at work and then ask questions later. Those questions will presumably be “what the hell do you think you’re doing? are you mad or just stupid? That sort of thing.)

I’ve found myself, in the last few weeks finding it increasingly difficult to go to bed. My brain annoyingly wants to stay active into the early hours. This is nothing new. But whereas before it was active from 11pm through to 1am, now it seems to want to stay up even later, 2am became the norm. Now it seems that 3am is becoming a normal point. Of course, this staying up late and getting up to drop molly off at school and take me to work has to has some payback somewhere. I can’t just function on 4 hours a night so I find that on at least one day over the weekend I shall be incapable of getting up before 11am. This is not a good situation.

Yet it was one I seemed powerless to change, despite my best intentions. So I hatched my dastardly plan. If I don’t feel sleepy at 3am tonight why not go with it and stay up all night? That way you could properly tire yourself out so that getting through Monday would be a struggle, and then all you have to do is stay awake until 10pm or so. THEN go to bed at a normal hour like normal folks do.
I’m thinking it’s my equivalent of a sleep reset button.
It may work. It may not.
All I know is that it’s 3:43am. I finished writing a review 15 minutes ago. Made the decision 10 minutes ago and have just written this to put it down on virtual paper (what phrase can we use now to replace getting it down on paper? putting it on screen doesn’t really work?)

So the plan now is to stay awake, see Louise, point her towards this post (hi Louise x), get Molly up, have a normal morning, get her to school, get me to school, have a good day, get home and then don’t allow myself to go to sleep before 10pm.
If all goes well, this will reset the system.
Or it may fuck me up even more.
Time will tell.
Let the great experiment commence. I need a coffee and more Gin.

Gin good. Gin & Tonic better. Gin Fizz?

I drink Gin & Tonic. When I relax. When I write. Especially when I write late and need to treat myself after finishing some piece or other.
I believe there is no better drink under the sun (or moon).

And like so many other drinks it’s brilliant because of it’s simplicity.
Which is why the Gin Fizz just sounds so very wrong. But I have to admit I’m intrigued as to the taste.

The Original Ramos Gin Fizz:
2 ounces gin
3 drops orange flower water
1 egg white(yep, raw egg)
1 teaspoon bar sugar
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce lime juice
2 ounces cream
Soda water

Writing exercise….. whilst drunk.

In one moment I shall switch off all windows, open up Dark room, the excellent writing software for windows and start a review of Matthew Craig’s self published goodies.
I shall stop once I:
a) finish
b) fall asleep
c) need more drink

This whole drinking on an empty stomach and with a throbing headache is very good for the creativity. Of course, no doubt when I read it through tomorrow night after watching Chelsea beat Man Utd (a difficult call really – two teams you really don’t want to win playing each other) I’ll realise why it’s a bad idea.

But right now it seems like a plan.
And I shall start right after I get myself another Gin.