Sleeping at Altitude

Dear Reader

I apologise for the longish interval since the last post. I say longish, but really, as the long-suffering long-term readers of this blog could tell you, this latest spell of literary inactivity is nothing, a mere blip on the radar, a veritable drop in the ocean of time, when compared to some of my previous hiatuses.

The blame for my non-writing is, as ever, to be laid firmly at the door of someone or something else. On this occasion I will blame more life changes. At the end of the month I moved out of the Finance Director’s house, flushed with success at having not burnt it to the ground. I consider not-burning-the-house-to-the-ground the principle achievement of any successful house-sitting gig, which may seem a conservative goal, but – I think you’ll agree – a worthy one.

The remainder of my time in the FD’s house went reasonably smoothly. Her bathroom scales continued to malfunction, only ever showing two numbers – zero and <a big number>, no matter how many times I went to the gym. But latterly my gym visits were stymied by a fungal infection in my foot (I do apologise if you’re eating your tea), which kept me on my backside for large parts of the day, with foot propped in the air, and doing a lot of hopping around on my other foot when movement was required.

On one memorable morning, I got out of bed, and showered, only to realise I had left something important (in a fungal foot-care sense) at the bottom of the stairs, and was left with no alternative but to hop down the stairs naked. Naturally, while mid-descent I remembered that the bottom of the stairs was 100% visible to anyone standing at the front door, due to the proliferation of unfortunately-placed glass doors. Such as, say, the postman.

Mercifully, the postman was not at that moment in the vicinity, and able to witness my naked stair-hopping. I hopped gratefully back up the stairs.

Having moved out of my big house in the country, I eschewed the opportunity to move in with my mother for the second time in my adult life, and instead moved into another flat in Edinburgh, which, it’s fair to say, is a fraction smaller. My bedroom is of a size which makes me wonder if, come the fast-approaching summer, there will be room for the bed *and* my cricket bag. I strongly suspect not. In other circumstances I might prefer the bag over the bed (am confident the cricket bag could be pressed into action as a bed – it’s approximately the same size), but the bed will not be moved, nailed to the wall as it is. It’s a cabin bed, the slightly-more-grown-up cousin of bunk beds, and it’s very high up. So high up in fact that I woke up feeling slightly ill halfway through Wednesday night, which I attributed to altitude sickness, but may in all honesty have been more to do with a bag of Cadbury’s mini eggs that I had worked my way through earlier in the evening.

The cabin bed, while not a bunk bed per se, brings back fuzzy nostalgic memories of caravanning holidays with my family in the 80s, only without the permanent faint smell of gas and the reassuring drumming of rain on the roof. It was during one of these caravan holidays that the top bunk (which was more of a hammock, and contained my sister at the time) collapsed on top of me one night. Good times.

My new flatmate is a top bloke with many endearing qualities, such as a sizeable Wisden collection. He’s given to much physical exercise, and goes running every Wednesday night, while I sit at home and work my way through the chocolate mini eggs (see above).

Obviously I can’t confirm that Cadbury’s will be the chocolate choice every week, and post-Easter one assumes that other non-egg related chocolate shapes will need to be found.

Maybe it’s time to find a local gym again…