Last night was strange,

It had been a particularly bad evening where none of my little pain relief tricks seemed to work. I was tanked up on morphine and paracetamol yet the pain was atrocious. It was a mixture of headache, toothache, very painful neck, pains behind the eyes and even looking at something hurt like blazes and of course the nose, throbbing and paining away and constantly dripping something I would rather not describe. Movement meant further darts through the head and neck so I had to adapt a sort of robotic walk where my head moved as little as possible.

I was miserable.

The only solution was to hit the sack early with yet another fistful of pills in the hope that a night’s sleep would do something. At half nine I went to bed and fell into a blissful pain-free drugged sleep.

Herself phoned to say she was in a bit of a bother. Nothing unusual there. I looked at my watch – eleven of the clock! At last a massive lie in which I have been owed for a few weeks.

After tending to Herself she demanded quietly suggested I make tea and toast. No sweat. That sounded like a good idea. I got dressed while the kettle was coming to the boil.

There was something bothering me though. It was just a little thing but something at the back of my mind suggested that something was akimbo. Why was it dark outside? I couldn’t work that one out at all.

So having tead and toasted I relaxed in my chair. But I had the lights on and it was still pitch black outside. Had Warble Gloaming finally tipped the planet? Had Russia, North Korea, China or Israel finally pressed the little red button and we were now in a nuclear winter? It didn’t make sense.

But then it dawned on me. Literally. Instead of a glorious long sleep I had in fact had about an hour and was now wide awake in the very small hours of the morning.

I didn’t mind. I dozed in my chair.

The pain was gone!