Insomnia, Ibuprofen, selotape, blood and misaligned perforations.

I've had a cold recently which means the emergency drugs come out, lung disease does not enjoy colds so it's out with the antibiotics and steroids on top of the usual daily cocktail. The result is sleepless nights infested by weird, exotic, physiological and psychological sensations. I do not need recreational drugs: my prescribed stuff when combined correctly is a narco-experimentalists dream.

At 4.00 am I decide in my heightened state of confusion/enlightenment to put together a small plastic bottle of Ibuprofen for a friend, she had been complaining earlier about the annoying blister packs such pain killers normally arrive in. At 4.00 am it seemed like a good idea to make her future life easier come headache time.

I found a small plastic bottle which had contained some of my meds and a couple of boxes of ibuprofen which I decanted into the bottle. I then decided to make a label so cut out a piece of the packaging for the pain killers and then looked for selotape....

You know that roll of selotape that you have had for years that you can never find the end to, eventually giving up in despair and chucking it back in a drawer time and time again because you cannot bear to throw it away, you know the nice kind of selotape, not shiny and never yellows but hides it's starting point well.

I only had that roll of selotape. I tried to find the end of the tape. 30 minutes later I decided that the only course of action was to find a stanley knife blade and cut a bloody deep slice through the tape in the hope that when I peeled it off, somehow miraculously, the tape would start behaving.

I succeeded in ramming the point of the stanley knife blade hard into the end of my thumb.

Thumbs bleed handsomely under such conditions and this one bled enthusiastically all over the selotape.

I went into the bathroom for some loo paper whith which to staunch the flow and snapped off a  few sheets then wrapped them about my thumb.

It was then that I noted that the loo paper was out of sync, you know, when 2 ply tissue becomes somehow unwound unequally and you are left with misaligned perforations.

I spent a considerable amount of time trying to get that loo paper in order by tearing off segments without getting it quite right whereupon I formed the opinion that perhaps it was a rogue roll with a lack of synchronicity to the core... I unrolled the roll to explore this possibility.

I eventually discarded the lot in the bin with an unconclusive conclusion to the enquiery and found a new, untampered with roll to put in the holder thing which as a left hander I have always felt was positioned on the wrong side of the loo.

Failing to find the tools to move the loo roll holder and noting that the loo paper on my thumb kept falling off, I thought: Ah, what I need is some selotape to hold it on with. I now had TWO pressing reasons why I should get the selotape to behave.

Half an hour later I succeeded in cleaning off the blood and peeling off sufficient tape (my stanley knife blade plan eventually succeeding) to bandage my thumb and to put a label on the pill bottle.

I looked at the clock... 6.00 am. Might as well stay awake and watch the rugby with a bracing morning cap of vodka & Berocca with a chocolate eclair chaser.

 

All in all a couple of hours of sleeplessness well spent and writers block a distant memory.