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I Wish Sleeping Was The New Normal
I went to visit my parents a few weeks ago.
I arrived about eleven, and after a coffee, we had lunch. After lunch, I sat down and had a cup of tea and a biscuit.
When we’d run out of things to say, my parents went out into the garden.
They are obsessed with the garden. It’s like a shrine. A temple. I’m expecting them to convert to Hinduism, just so they can be reincarnated in the pagoda at the top of the lawn.
After they had gone out in their matching nettle-proof gloves, gardening clogs and overalls — that’s a sight to behold — I drifted off into a pleasant postprandial doze…
‘… Philip!’ My father bellowed, waking me up.
‘What!?’ I raised my head.
‘Why are you sleeping?’ I half expected him to prise me off the sofa with his heavily padded gardening gloves like a bouncer removes a drunk from a nightclub.
My parents hate sleep. Always have done. They equate sleep with laziness and sloth.
My father is 80 and still gets up at six. My mother soon after. Even if they are tired, or have drunk too much, they’re still up at the crack of dawn.
Why, I’ve no idea?
They have nothing to do. They are retired. Have been for fifteen years. Yet…
