The Farmer & His Wife

No cheese before bedtime for John Taylor!

IMET Jack today. He was looking drawn. “Has Alice said anything about him being ill?” I asked Anne.

“Not a thing,” Anne replied. “He’s probably just tired. They never go to bed till after midnight – they sit and watch the telly.”

Jack, I suppose, gets up at 6.30 every morning, like me. How anyone can survive on six hours’ sleep I can’t imagine.

Anne goes to bed about half past nine, just after the news. If we’re still up at ten o’clock, it’s a late night for us.

The other evening, a fellow farmer dropped in on his way home from the local pub. We were just about to hit the stairs.

I went to the door, saw Calum – and the state he was in!

“Come in, Calum,” I said and he swayed his way up the hall. “Anne, Calum would like a black coffee – very black!”

Anne made him a beef sandwich and rang his wife to tell her where he was and that I would run him home.

I was happy to do so, but it meant I didn’t get to bed till eleven o’clock. Anne was in bed fast asleep with the light still on. I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel like getting up at 6.30 the next morning.

I like my sleep. Anne says I snore, but that’s only if I’m lying on my back and have eaten a cheese sandwich before retiring.

Anne has tried to get me out of this habit. She now makes a thick oatmeal porridge which I enjoy with a drop of cream. I think I sleep better than I do after a cheese sandwich.

We have a firm bed, bought, according to Anne, from Blindcraft in Dundee. It’s a bit too firm for my liking. Isn’t there a happy medium?

Many years ago we went to a wedding in Kirkby Lonsdale. We stayed in a hotel where the bed was an old-fashioned one with a wire base and a feather mattress. Anne and I both fell into the middle. However we tried, we couldn’t sleep in our own halves.

The next morning I asked who the owner of the hotel was. I wrote to him and got a reply. Some time later, when we returned to that same hotel for another cousin’s wedding, we were given the Royal Suite.

At home, Anne sleeps on the left side, that is if you’re standing at the bottom of the bed looking up to the head. I sleep on the right, the window side.

Any time we’re away, we have to go through the ritual of standing at the bottom and working out which side is whose.

We got it wrong one night and it took us about half an hour to work out why we couldn’t get to sleep!