My socks caused this damn insomnia again

Drinking a number of Jack Daniels and coke put me in a slightly intoxicated sleep. Not too many drinks just enough. It was good because I didn't have to lay there and think crap, head hit the pillow and off to lala land. Nothing to do with the telly tubbies either. However at about 3 a.m. I awoke, so the four hours of somnambulism had been snatched away. Gently a waft of something smelly seemed to be tickling my nose. It was bad enough to just lay there and realise sleep was not going to happen again but to understand this waft was from me, or because of me. From yesterday. My socks to be precise. Now in a imaginary world where dreams are of the weirdest kind those very socks would of done a favour and walked off on their own, like the mops from Disney's Magician's Apprentice. They would of found the dirty laundary basked and dived in there all of their own accord. For it would of been the right thing to do. However, socks are evil, they do not have the power to get up and walk to the dirty washing pile, instead they will lay on the floor where last left and fester in the previous day's sweat and bacteria. Slowly and surely letting their presence known throw the reminder of their odour. This is what happened at 4 a.m. and makes me get up to write this bloody BLOG.

What is it about 4 a.m. in the morning? It is a time when going back to sleep is absolutely essential to ensure you are bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning, but it is also one of those times when the pressure is on because if sleep does not come in an instant it will mean it is unlikely to come at all. Just laying there trying desperately not to move, or if it is necessary to move then to find the perfect position where sleep will return. Yet the bed is too hot, it feels uncomfortable, there is a itching devil in your mind jumping up and down on the cerebellum giving it a right kicking and not letting nature take it's course. Mind this may well be down to drinking too much coke and about now the effects of the alcohol have worn of but the effects of too much caffine are kicking in. So by the time you do get up about 8 a.m. then you're feeling like shit and want to go to bed again but can't because the law of humanity says it is time to get up and move your blooming arse, things need to be done.

I've not been walking so much this week. Which is odd why I should be woken up by the smell of my socks. For walking gives them a reason to be worn out and stinky. Taking the bus or the train into work most days and returning the same way has my preferred modus operandi. It is a form of lazyness when lazyness doesn't strike at night. It really is something I should sleep on, oh except I can't sleep on it, not at the moment anyway. I used to think walking was a boring thing to do and it was something the unfit people did, the ones who could not get to a gym, who were fat and said they walked as a way to ease their conscience. Now I'm older, fatter and unfit I to walk to ease my conscience and become a hypocrite to my younger self. The slimmer self who slept very well, the slimmer self who didn't drink too much coke or eat too much and had more head on his head. But such is the way of the world and getting older. Such is the way of invidious nocturnal very early morning awakenings and writings of words in blogs which never get read by anyone but are a reminder to humanity that one awake individual did write something down. Even if it was for himself and in order to ease his awoke nonsleeping mind, which very much would like to sleep.

Think I'll go and lay down now, but I can't sleep because I need to get up shortly. And maybe sort those socks out.

Flatulenence or the farts to anyone else

Flatulence is one of those nice words given to an act which can result in people fleeing your vicinity, fast. I once read if you needed to get somewhere in a crowded room fast to pretend you were about to puke. It is a small snippet of information picked up from Hunter Thompson's book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which is all about getting high on drugs.  Now puking is considered something which can not help because you are either ill or drunk and to do so in public I'd hope was down to being sick. There is a sympathy element because everybody has puked once in a while and it is not a nice thing to do. Similarly everybody farts every single day and several times a day. I used to think my partner Sparkling Eyes never farted at all, I don't know how she did it but I found out she did as you always do when you are male and a female tries to hide something away about herself but is going to come out at some time or other. Regardless, it didn't stop me thinking of her in a less respectful way, it meant my partner was human and not a lizard eating alien. What a relief. A little like the relief of an ever bloating stomach which eventual leads to one hell of an exploding fart. Which reminds me of work.

Farting monkeys

There are times when eating too many carbohydrates has a certain affect on the belly. It's not just about putting on weight it is for those sensitive persons who can help but let a rip roaring fart every now and again. Or maybe just letting lots and lots of little ones off like secret bombs. I must confess to doing the both of these on a regular basis when eating too many carbs. Particularly white carbs. Breads, cakes and rice are the biggest culprits. On these occasions there is no alternative but to go to the toilet as frequently as possible during the day. Drink as much liquids as I can and just keep on visiting. I therefore would be no good as an individual who is glued to their seat in a job which would not let me roam about free as the wind once in a while. The worst thing of all is working in an office with a majority of women in it. For women are sensitive to smells, they are always putting on perfumes and I must admit to finding the odd whiff of perfume sprayed nearby which heads my direction. Even this week I thought one of them had must of puffed their fumes on my shoulder as I sat there diligently working and doing my best not to let the explosive farts explode. The problem being that loud farts are like someone with one of those incredibly large foam hands and a finger pointing, just walking along and then pointing it directly at your arse. Everybody knows. Hence running to the toilet as often as possible, taking a short sit down break and just ripping away. What a flipping relief.  It's at times like this the individual sitting in the next cubicle who is more concerned with the smart phone than their guts gets up an leaves. The toilet is the appropriate place for farts and anything else arse wise but it is not a comfy seat to sit down catch up with text messages or playing another level on a game you're addicted. But yet there are employees who disappear off to the loo just for this reason and I must admit to it being a pet hate. If they are going to sit there and read the latest football scores I am going to sit there and make it as unpleasant as I can with a big exploding fart. See how long the footy interests you then Pal!  What a waste of space.

So inherently human beings fart and I don't know why it is considered disgusting. Except of course for the pungent ones, we all do it, it is a natural fact of life.  Further it is not just humans who fart, every animal under the sun farts. We've all had pet dogs or cats who would lay there sleeping as if butter would not melt in their mouth, being so very cute suddenly let of a fart. My wonderful old cat Tigger was a right old wind bag as he got aged.  He was beautiful but boy those purrs came at an expense.  The same happens when your dog is allowed in the bed room just as want to get a little more sleep.  Dogs eat anything so in respect they are going to fart a lot. 

Some diets will make you more prone to farting and for me it is the carbs I have no doubt in it. And the baked beans eaten late one evening only to reappear in another form the entire next day. We are not taught what to eat and how to eat as we grow up. We don't know what a balanced diet is, our national dishes are full of carbs and the national vegetable is pure carb. Perhaps it is to do with the microbial flora and forna of the gut, not being quite up to scratch in some instances. Then surely you'd of thought there would be a yoghurt drink to replace all those important microbes and get the gut back in to working fashion but not as gaseous.  If the smell was taken away then farting would be a minor inconvenience and nobody would say a thing. But there is discrimination against farters, it is especially held against those who cant help it and have exploding arses.  People turn their head when they hear the sound, the rip, the roar and they expect their air space to be shortly invaded. This discrimination is unfair because the deadly and silent get away with it. Nobody knows who they are, and they sit there hidden smile on their face never owning up to the stink bomb they just let off.  In my mind loud farters should get medals, they should be patted on the back and advised on dietary

matters whereas the silent dudes need to be lined up against a wall and shot. Well maybe not shot, but certainly shamed. Go and fart somewhere else you silent farting disgusting individual, yes we know you can't help it and we may well be in your same spot shortly. But for this present moment while the pungency has not dispersed you are the spawn of satan.

To tell the truth it all seems a little over dramatic if you ask me.

A memory of studying Pure Math

Many years ago I went to evening classes and studied Pure Maths.  It wasn't an easy subject, what made it worse was the fact I didn't have much in the way of math skills.  It was how I felt even though I'd done pretty well at O'Level and got a grade B, at A'Level things seemed quite a bit different. It was an entirely different kettle of fish to say the least. So rather than doing the course in two years it took three or maybe it was a one year course which took two, it doesn't matter much now. I did pass it and get a grade E, but that was one of the toughest grades to achieve. One of my math teachers was a small Indian man called Sam Roa. He wore shoes which looked two sizes too big, an oversized jacket, shirt and trousers. He looked a little odd, but he knew his math. He came to every lesson without a lesson plan and would teach straight out of his head. It seemed so often his lectures were unstructured and it was always difficult going from question to answer understanding what he was doing and  how he did it. They were the most frustrating lessons I every had. He seemed a nice enough man, he just didn't really get to grips with the understanding he had to help his pupils understand and go over things slowly and more thoroughly.

I don't know why he came to mind now, because it was many years ago and in all certainty he is likely to be dead, I was in my early twenties then. So it was going on thirty years.  Mr Roa looked old and I just couldn't tell you how old he was so this is why I think he is probably deceased now. The annoying thing was I really wanted to learn math, I had the motivation but it was like coming up against a brick wall. There were very few of us in his classes, if I remember rightly maybe only three pupils in the end sat the final lessons of the course. We all had problems understanding, except I recall for a chinese pupil who already had a talent for algebra and had decided he would just hit every question with algebra in it. Great for him but not for the rest of us. 

Still even today I have some pure math text books on the shelf and I wonder if I could of picked up those subjects better than I did those years ago. I wonder whether everything just gets forgotten and it never comes back again. Could I actually study and understand now? I don't know. Where has all that math gone?