Bloody Insomnia Bird!

The first night of January was blissfully quiet. Then last night the wretched blackbird started again. It isn't the most tuneful of blackbirds. Melodious? Forget it. This one was trained in the squeaky chalk on blackboard school of singing. Maybe it is descended from the punk blackbirds of 1976. Turdus merula, the Latin name for a blackbird, would make a good punk band name. It certainly sounds like shit. Especially at 3 am.

I have found its nest, tucked away under the plastic roof that covers next door's side passageway and garage. Very cosy and waterproof. Mr Grumpy reckons that when foxes set off the security light, it thinks it's morning, wakes up and starts squawking. I remember last year when I was plagued by the 5 am thrush. February isn't far away. Back to the earplugs. Damn!

I mentioned last time that I had another sleep secret up my sleeve, or rather, on my bedside table. It is Sleep Well drops, flower essences from www.lightheartessences.com and also available from www.victoriahealth.com Just 6 drops do the trick if your sleeplessness is caused by your mind being, quote 'over-excited or over-active', which mine often is. As I get little time to myself, the moment I close the bedroom door all kinds of ideas for novels and short stories come flooding in.

Sometimes my brain is writing a whole chapter for me on a mental computer screen while I'm trying to get to sleep. Characters are speaking and won't shut up. Once, I composed an entire musical symphony and then dropped off and forgot the lot. If only a device could be invented that transferred ones' thoughts direct to the computer without the need for typing it all in, and did it at the speed of thought, rather than the painfully slow process that transforms the blinks and finger twitches if the disabled into words, or the voice activated software that takes an age to adapt to one's way of speaking.

That, and a 'beam me up, Scotty' form of instant travel, would be the two things that would completely transform my life (apart from a fairy godmother waving a wand and making me 40 years younger and more beautiful). I had a dream once in which my body was broken down to its component atoms and streamed through space and reassembled on another planet. I'm not asking for that much. I'd just like to be reassembled on Olu Deniz beach in Turkey and have a delicious cocktail thrust into one hand and a .... no, keep it clean!