Counting sleeps

Strange as it might seem for somebody who writes stuff like this, but I do get bothered at times by things that just doesn’t make sense.

Which is why a new trend I’ve noticed over the past while has really started to bug the hell out of me.

It’s a new measurement of time called – a sleep.

And here’s the thing, while half the time I think I could be a mathematician, the other two thirds of the time I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t really be cut out for it.

Especially when there are all sorts of new measurements to have to deal with, like umm, a sleep.

If you have reached this point and are a bit lost, don’t worry cos this is a normal enough reaction to my writing and it usually wears off in around six months or so.

Oh yeah, back to the whole sleep thing. You might have noticed that people have been measuring time using the word sleep in recent times (or should that be in recent sleeps, I just don’t know any more).

You know the kind of thing – “five sleeps ‘til my birthday,” “sixty nine sleeps ‘til Christmas,” all that jazz.

But it doesn’t make any sense, because - and here’s the science bit as they used to say in the adverts – people have different sleeping patterns.

And no folks I’m not talking about what’s on their duvet covers, I’m talking about the amount of time (or should that be sleeps) they spend sleeping!

Okay let’s just run with the person who gets up at 7am every day, goes to bed at 11.30pm every night and sleeps soundly for the rest of the hours but only those hours. A person like that might be justified in counting their time in terms of sleeps.

Why they would want to do that when there are perfectly good terms like day and night around, I just dunno. I mean these are terms that have stood the test of time, people know what they mean and they don’t mean something that they are not.

If somebody told you they would be away for a day, you kinda knew how long they would be gone for. If they tell you they are away for a sleep. Well now folks, come on, how are we to know?

I mean what counts as a sleep? What about the person who sits down in the evening with the tv on and with the fire blazing and wakes two hours later with a big slobber mark on the side of the sofa cushion? Did they sleep? Sure they did. Does it count? Umm, I dunno.

I mean some thought has been put into the day and night thing and we have seconds and minutes and hours and stuff. But if you have a nap for fifteen minutes in an afternoon where does that fall into play in the whole sleep thing?

Even thinking about it now has started to hurt my head.

I think I’ll go lie down and have a wee day to myself.

I’ll be gone for at least a sleep.