SLEEPING BEAUTY/BEAUTY SLEEP

‘They’ say that as you get older you need less sleep – this is not true.  I still need about seven hours sleep a night and preferably starting no later than 11pm.  With the New Husband, being in bed at a civilised time is impossible.  He is totally unaware of time and even getting him a ridiculously expensive watch has had no effect.  His only rapport with time seems to be food-related.  Anyway, my sleep patterns were totally messed up when I moved to Switzerland with La Fée Verte and the Rock Thrower, when RT started at the Lycée.  Posh ski resorts do not have mudane things such as Lycées, so this meant getting up at 5.30 am so RT could catch the car postale from the centre of town to the train station where he caught the St. Bernard ‘Express’ to Martigny, changed trains and then on to Sion.  An hour and a half to get to the Lycée – pure hell.  I didn’t have to get up in the morning to give him his breakfast, being a grown-up child, but I couldn’t just send him out in the cold and dark, especially in the winter when it was often -10° and we had had a foot of fresh snow during the night.  I had to make sure he wore more than a tee-shirt, had got his rail pass, school bag, telephone, keys, and yet more money.

Two years of this lark and we were both gibbering wrecks and I had been reduced to total zombiness.  Then life changed, I moved to Brussels to be with the New Husband and RT was safely installed in his old Lycée in Toulouse.  Over the last year sleep has returned and I can now get through to about 7am.  However the New Husband is away in England this week and suddenly I am up again at 5am.  So although I moan at his non-existant hours,  I at least sleep better when he is around!

Yesterday’s excitement was the collecting of ‘monsters’ – our garage contains everything apart from a car but twice a year the ‘commune’ organises ‘monster’ collections, where you put all your huge junk on the street.  I missed the last collection, so yesterday with the help of RT we disposed of the oldest sofa on the Planet, a couple of mattresses, crappy flat-pack that once assembled must never be taken to pieces again and various strange things that the New Husband had squirreled into the garage.  Being away, the New Husband was desperate I would throw all his crap rubbish out in a fit of Spring cleaning and kept phoning to ask what we were doing in the garage.  Now this man may have helped me get back into normal sleep patterns but I am definitely living with a Squirrel.  He is totally incapable of throwing anything away – even the junk mail we get through the letter box.  RT and I have collected all his tons of papers and put them in a corner of the garage – he has, at the moment, 3m3 of old papers, files, scribbled notes – and we haven’t yet finished.  A quick glance at some of the files shows letters dating back to the ’80s.  Does anyone have a cure for this?  Apart from chucking it all out, I can’t see a solution … he actually gets quite nasty when I suggest we tackle this paper mountain.  I was feeling decidedly unloving towards him yesterday when the space cleared of monsters was filled with boxes, and boxes, and boxes of papers that serve absolutely no purpose apart from taking space.  Perhaps an ultimatum – me or the papers.  Might be sticking my neck out there though!

His office is still full of boxes so by the end of the day we should have about 4m3 stashed away.  Perhaps I should put a box a day on his desk and lock him in the office, not allowing him out until it is put into rubbish bags – although we need an industrial shredding company to deal with this efficiently.  I would take a photo to show you, but he has taken the camera to England and my mobile ‘phone doesn’t have a camera on it.  One good thing – RT and I rediscovered the wine cellar/room … no wine in it though as it had been used as one of the New Husband’s paper storage areas so for the last year we have never even seen the wine racks.  Do you think he is desperately insecure?  I’m beginning to wonder!

PS  I got quite annoyed yesterday with neighbours … the ‘monster’ collection is organised in advance – you ring, they give you a time and date and send you an SMS the night before to remind you they are coming.  For collecting the junk, the first 2m3 is free and you then pay €19 for each supplementary cubic metre.  RT and I stacked everything neatly on the pavement, hoping that it looked no more than 2m3, putting all the flat pack neatly on the sofa, etc.  A neighbour goes past and takes all the stuff off the sofa to have a look – I go out and see her and ask her nicely to put it back in order afterwards – no problem.  I go out 10 minutes later and the bitch has just left the stuff lying all over the street.  I am responsible for the pavement outside my house – imagine if someone had fallen on this stuff?  Soooo cross.  Reorganise the stuff and suddenly a couple from over the road appear with a mattress and just dump it with mine.  Explain politely that if I go over 2m3 I have to pay extra … think … I’m not paying for your crap to go out.  They then have the cheek to tell me that I am lying and that it is free.  Stood my ground and said no but told them to keep an eye out for the lorry and then ask the guys themselves to take it away.  So lived up to my nickname of the Dragon yesterday, and am probably hated by half the street now!