Woke Up This Mornin……..

I woke up this morning but not like the song. I didn’t get myself a gun and I most certainly didn’t have a blue moon in my eye.

I was tired.

The radio let out easily digestible shreds of news which did not all get as far as my brain even if they fluttered around my unlistening ears. I lay there thinking how do they do it, these politicians. I heard that a new police commissioner for Northern Ireland has been appointed. Where does he get his energy from? “The Troubles”, fortunately, are mostly behind us but those fighting morons on both sides of the divide are still at it and someone has to sort them out. Rather him than me I thought still lying there in my cocoon.

President Obama too has a busy day apparently. Would I really have gotten out of bed if I had a meeting with the deplorable Israeli prime minster and the hardly less offensive Palestinian leader. Whatever he does, it seems, Barack Obama will fail and then he will have to carry on the fight with his own American critics. Maybe, like me, he should just turn over and go back to sleep.

OK, I admit it, tiredness had taken off the gilding on this late September day.

Opening the front door I found the first of the Autumn leaves lying on the pavement outside. Finished and dried out they looked – just how I felt before breakfast and that essential cup of strong black French coffee.

I suppose I have been especially active over the last week and I am paying the price this morning. As I approach the anniversary of my brain haemorrhage on 30th. October I could easily sink into that mysterious place, “the Slough of Despondency.” I am sure you know where it is – turn left after the “Vale of Tears,” it is all downhill after that.

I remember as a child being told not to worry about some particularly upsetting event because I was merely “over-tired.” That well-meaning relative was right of course – the next day, after a good night’s sleep, I could hardly remember what all the fuss was about.

In fact the week that has made me feel so “over-tired” has been a great one. I made my first solo journey on a train since my illness, conquered a lot of those feelings of agoraphobia, got encouraging news from the hospital over my vocal chords, met up with some old friends, went to a fantastic rock concert and returned to my acupressure masseur who hadn’t seen me for a year and who thought I was in remarkably good condition after my fractured spine and brain haemorrhage – I was looking fit with my back straight and my spirits up, he said.

I also made my debut as a performing poet and made real progress with my kungfu training so, maybe I should just accept feeling tired as a perfectly normal consequent of fun.

I went out into my small back garden with that mug of coffee and the newspaper but to get there I had to fracture Horace the spider’s web which he had spun right across my doorway. Sorry Horace but the journey was worth it.

If Autumn had meant a few dried up leaves to me when I first got up, coming outside showed me just how wrong I was.

Here Summer’s roses were still labouring on only to be joined by a new burst of colour – the most arousing of reds as the newly flowering climbing fushsias have been joined by the splendid dahlia The Bishop of Llandaff.

The garden is full of an energy that I have yet to summon today but my spirits rose just looking at the walls covered in climbing plants that never give up or stop achieving new heights.

Was it the plants or was it the coffee that made me feel enervated? Both probably but maybe it was Horace because when I came back in, he had already re-spun his web ready for me to shatter once more.

Now Horace never gives up and neither shall I.