Talking RABBISH
How shops are pulling the wool over our eyes when we are trying to solve the problem of lack of sleep
IT would not do for a man of my sombre disposition to begin a column like this: Yay. So I’ll begin with something similar but more fitting: Yawn. (Readers’ chorus: “Yes, that is fitting”).
I witter thus in the wake – and I use the word advisedly – of news that we’re in the middle of an epidemic of insomnia. It turns out if you get a good night’s sleep these days there must be something wrong with you. Because nobody else does.
It’s because we’re all worrying, sozzled or depressed. Indeed, while Worry, Sozzled and Depressed sounds like a good name for a law firm, it sums up the current position of Western humanity, the most advanced and backward species on the planet.
I’ll be quite candid with you here and say I have a terrible time sleeping, though it used to be worse. At one time, after many insomnolent nights on end, I nearly packed in my job with the intention of taking to my bed until sleep came.
I got over that, and soon started sleeping okay again for a while, but at that time realised the most distressing aspect of the whole wretched business: there’s neither rhyme nor reason to it. I’ve slept blissfully through the bad times and lain awake during the good. Drink is often implicated, but it’s just as unpredictable. One night last week, I didn’t imbibe a drop and, apart from a brief period between eight and nine when I searched frantically for a rope with which to hang myself, I got through it – and never slept a wink. Next night, I inhaled a small vat of Ardbeg and did a straight eight hours. It’s supposed to be the other way round. And maybe it is over the piece, but who’s going to face grim reality for months on end sober? You’d have the Samaritans on speed-dial.
A bath before bedtime is also supposed to help but, again, the same thing happened: worked the first night; didn’t work the second. Most recently, I have been experimenting with natural pills called 5-HTP that fiddle with your chemical genitalia, if that’s the word for which I’m groping.
They raise your levels of melatonin or serotonin or whatever – something in your heid at any rate – which reduces anxiety and gives you a bus pass to Bedfordshire.
On this, I’ve had some of the best nights’ sleep ever – and some of the worst. More disturbingly, for short periods, I haven’t felt gloomy, which has been extremely disorientating. I started to worry that, if it continued, I wouldn’t be able to write.
Then I thought: who cares (readers’ chorus: “Exactly”)? Maybe I could get a proper job and be happy. Dream on, Rab/Robert/Bertie (see below). Apart from anything else, I’ve applied for proper jobs and been told I’m not qualified.
One more cure remains. It was announced this week that woolly pyjamas help you sleep. Apparently, wool regulates your temperature, which is important.
So I went shopping on yonder internet and couldn’t find one pair of woollen pyjamas. Even so-called “woollen mills” didn’t have any. It was all cotton or polyester. Ruddy capitalism: every shop sells the same three brands of apple and you can’t find a pair of woolly pyjamas.
I’ll keep searching. But I’m not going to lie awake at night worrying about it. Not tonight anyway. The following night? Probably. Night after that: nope. After that: yep. So it goes on. Awake one night. Asleep the next. Neither rhyme nor reason to it.
Be nice to baldies
SOME idiot mentioned cures earlier and, this week, yet another remedy for male-pattern baldness made the headlines. None of these cures ever works, and it’d probably be better if we just got rid of our prejudices against baldy men and stopped regarding them as immoral or dissolute.
Since the last century, we’ve made progress in this regard. In 1931, it was made illegal to hunt
baldies for sport and, in Scotland at least, they’ve had the right to vote since 2002.
At the time of writing, however, slapheads still face discrimination in some bars and newspaper columns. This is despite the fact that, as a result of hormonal imbalances caused by washing -up liquid getting into the water supply, huge numbers of men today are bald.
Most of us will have pushed a bald person over just for fun, and it’s that sort of behaviour that has to stop. Even responsible people like, say, Nicola Sturgeon, will surely have sneaked up behind a baldie and booted him up the bahookie, even though she’d vehemently deny it now. We’ve all done it.
Let us all resolve therefore that, from now on, we will act responsibly towards those men unlucky enough to lack cranial follicles, even if we would not like our daughters to marry one.
Your name is mud
A SHOCK survey revealed people are prejudiced for or against people because of their names, and that such prejudices don’t always match reality. For example, lassies called Gemma were assumed to be bad-tempered or unkind, while those called James were thought charismatic and confident. The truth? Some are and some aren’t.
Being a Robert is a nightmare because of its many variants. There’s Bob, Bobby, Boab, Boaby, Rab, Rabbie (as bairns call me), Rob (anglicised Rab), Robbie (when in the Western Isles), Bert (more for Alberts really), and Bertie (which PG Wodehouseloving friends call me).
The risk of a split personality is clear. Robert is a nob, Boaby a knob, Bob grown up, Bertie irresponsible, and Rab common.
I talk to myself as Rab but am wary of others using it. Close friends and colleagues are fine, but strangers think they’re putting me in my place with it, deploying undertones of inverted snobbery and a hint of “kent yir faithir” (even though mine was a Bob).
In personal experiments with strangers, I’ve found Robbie gets the most positive response.
It’s all terribly confusing. Damned parents: why don’t they consult us on such matters?