Recovery day. It’s really not very far, or very taxing, but the drive along the motorway to Cardiff and back seems always to leave me feeling drained. So, as if it was anything at all unusual, I have spent the day with my feet up ‘listening to the radio’ with Dolly.
“Oh. You mean you’re going to have a mid-day nap before lunch and your afternoon nap?”
“Could be,” I said, wrapping up all warm in a fleece and pulling my woollen hat down over my ears. “You got a problem with that?”
I woke in good time to do lunch, and before I got over-tanked with sleep so as to spoil my afternoon siesta.
You could say I’ve got this retirement thing nicely wrapped up.
Needless to say, if more interesting things had been available, and the weather not quite so dull and listless, I’d have shaken sleep from my shoulders and joined in with the rest of the planet. These days I seem able to sleep the way I dreamed of doing when I was a working man. Particularly a man who did shift work.
The number of times I’ve lain on the bed in a darkened room, trying my hardest to sleep so’s I’d be rested and capable of working a late evening or a night shift!
Now I don’t have to try. I don’t even have to darken the room. All I need is closed eyes and a snuggled-up cat. And there I go, zizzing away once more.
Yes, you’re allowed to be a little envious. How does Shelley put it? Oh, yes:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Can’t say fairer than that!
