Sleeeep!!

                                       RUSSELL KANE

I'm an expert on sleep; it's something I do every day. Most of the people I know sleep too: some are deep sleepers and some light – some only sleep for a couple of hours a night. But the people who don't sleep at all hate people telling them what to do to sleep. This is because we all need different conditions in order to actually fall in to the land of nod.

Lots of times, if I have an important appointment the next day, I will be awake all night. I have known a target time of getting up at 5.00 am and at 10 passed 5 I am still awake. And do you know what? That's when I drop off; for 15 minutes!

It's a strange thing and the number of times it has happened to me I can't say as it's too many times but I have always lasted through the day and been quite perky and lively and . . and . . . oh I nearly dropped off then.

I have heard about a lot of insomniacs lately and in fact there has been a convention this week by people in the sleep business, and there is a word for a condition that people suffer from when so called experts are pontificating about how great they are at going to sleep.

I am okay but when away with someone – my wife, for example, and we are in a strange place, I look at her and she has gone. Laying there in bed asleep. When away filming, for instance, I have heard snoring from the next room within minutes of the person going in there to sleep.

Once I got in a train in Marseilles intending to travel the full length of France right up to Calais and paid extra to get a sleeping compartment (yes I know a compartment that is asleep) – all I had with me was a large baguette and some water which I had planned to make last for the whole journey. I sat in my seat and watched Provence through the window, started thinking and thinking deeply and then started to think about Walter Mitty and his secret life and the sound he always heard when he started to sleep – 'ta pocket ta pocket ta pocket ta pocket' and you know I could feel the sleep coming over me, I didn't need a pee, I was very comfortable, I was going to sleep and then . . .bang on the door.

The man had come to turn the bed down. It was a normal train seat which turned into bunk beds in a flash. I couldn't even sit properly, I had to keep my back bent.

I asked him of he could leave it and he said someone else might be getting on the train and they would like to get in to bed.

That did it! I eventually got into bed and every time the train stopped I looked for the old lady with a surgical stocking and sensible shoes who I was sure was going to share the room with me – or my bed!!! Arghhhh!

So that was it; I was awake.

Then I wanted a pee.

There was a hole in the floor where I was supposed to pee – what about if I wanted a number 2? - perhaps not!

Eventually we stopped at a big city; is this Paris? No it was Lyon, a huge industrial city through the window is all I could see. Steam rising from somewhere, steam going somewhere and then – sleep.

Missed the bit where we pulled out of the station, missed Paris and the train arrived in Calais after that huge journey through the night smack on time.

The sleep convention, I mentioned before, said that you must be comfortable in bed, you must relax – no alcohol because that sleep is no good for you – and you must read a comfortable, safe book, maybe one you've read before, no computer screens nothing.

What I used to do, sometimes, was count backwards from 7000; full words six thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine etc or think that I am on the stage and I have to recite The Sick Note, which I used tom do in my Irish show 'Dear sir I write this note to you to tell you of my plight/and at the time of writing I am not a pretty sight – and by the time I got half way through it I would be asleep. The secret is – and the counting backwards – it makes your mind wander and trying to concentrate sends you to sleep.

Here is one of my favourite comedians – Russell Kane.

I remember him from Edinburgh when he scolded a theatre critic for giving someone a bad review just because she had a strange voice and was fat. This critic gave me a rave review – a great one – but only 3 stars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMKcxrnwYV4

National Poetry Day

It's National Poetry Day today in the UK - not that you'd notice so here's my contribution.

Written about 10 years ago, which I used as a prologue to my first novel - yes it's a pastiche of the opening to Portrait of the Artist. Let's see how many more will follow with their poetry:

The Man with the Pen
Once upon a time, and a long time ago
It was, in the city of Dublin,
In the land of Ireland, there was a man
With a pen; and this man with the pen gave it
To a little fella who wrote many
A poem, limerick and story;
And the poems, limericks and stories
Spread to the four corners of the world, it was a square world;
And the poems, limericks and stories
That spread to the four corners of the world
Made the earth round - into a great ball -
‘Surrounded by clouds’ as the great man once said!

Near the ball there was a moon, which added
Romance and imagination to the poems,
Limericks and stories; and around all this
Were stars and planets and they formed a system
Called the solar system;
And it was solar and alone;
And writers came along and looked to the moon,
And beyond, to the stars and planets
In the solar system for inspiration:
And when they got the inspiration they needed
They used the pen to write; for that is what a pen is for.
And the man with the pen looked down at the writers,
Whenever they were in their blocks,
And gave them the start that they needed
And this is how the writers of Ireland
Told the people of the world the absolute truth –
Which they had found on the wall
Of Bewley’s Coffee shop in Grafton Street Dublin;
For there were many in Bewley’s would put the world to right
In an afternoon’s confabulation.

But the writer was always the little fella;
The little fella who had to meet the big bad bullies
When he was at school; the big bad bullies
That made him take part
In their big bad bumpy games,
Which would frighten the poor little fella,
At that very early and tender age
When all the boys had to learn to head the greasy orb
Which they called a football;
Had to go into that big bad world
Which they called a school;
Had to find out that most of the bullies
Were the teachers: teachers who took great pleasure
And unnatural delight
In striking many a young child across the backside
With their canes and slippers;
But the little writer would get his own back
On the big bad bullies for he would write about them.

Sometimes, but not often, the big bad bully
Would read what the little writer had written
And knock the be Jesus out of him;
Break his glasses,
Knock the pen out of the little fella’s hand
And burn his books:
At four hundred and fifty one degrees Fahrenheit.

But there was always somebody
To pick up that pen and look up,
Up towards the stars in the heaven
Where they would seek the same stimulation;
And the man with the pen would look down and give it.