Up early on a Saturday? Ghastly. It is for a fine cause though: that of the Rebel Alliance. Today we’re driving down to Bath for the Bath Fringe, where we shall once more don the apparel of improvised Star Warses. It’s going to be very fun, even if it does involve quite a bit of time in a car.
I am somewhat knackered. The sleeping poorly thing has sucked this week – I am just not getting tired enough to sleep until the early hours of the morning and that’s not enough snoozing time. I need my beauty sleep (it’s for everyone else’s benefit of course). I missed yesterday’s scribblings because we were at UK Games Expo, which necessitated trying (and failing) to be at the Aconyte Books stand comfortably before 9am when the public were unleashed on the halls. There’s a chain of dependencies running backwards from there including important things like sleeping well and not cruising through an alarm, or the three that I set. In theory this should all have been fine – we finished set up in good time on Thursday, chilled out for a bit in my hotel room. I needed to sleep so badly by this point that I’d already given myself a severe burn on my wrist off the steam from the kettle in my hotel room. It took me a few seconds to realise why my wrist hurt, which is not a great indicator of wakefulness. I fled the room, bumbled around some shops to stay awake for a little longer, had some nice food and was back in my room by eight for winding down. I was so desperate to get a decent night’s sleep I even took my last couple of amitriptylines. I’d picked up a bath bomb, face and foot masks so I could laze in the bath. Dozed off a few times in there, read a few chapters of my book, dozed a bit more and yet did not properly get to sleep till after midnight and then woke up at five, having hallucinated my alarm. And then further half crash out, half semi-awake brain murmuring. Obviously that left me running late and hastily showering, acquiring breakfast and having a bag full of books explode on me. Not the best preparation for selling books and chatting with random folks for the whole day. It was good though, and we sold a heap of books to interested and nice people. I did a lot less wandering around the convention than usual, but I did score a few games in the bring and buy sale.
A lift home spared me from the horror of the Megabus (thank fuck) and it was lovely to be home at a sane hour, ready to wind down again. I caved once more and took some more amitriptyline, which appears to have knocked me out pretty well. Not for quite long enough because we’re being collected at 9.30 for the drive down. I’m feeling that familiar bodily lag from taking the sleeping tablets, but I appear to have a vocabulary and don’t feel too wretched. I’m not sure where I go from here with sleep habits and pills. I’m very conscious that the notion of failing to give up sleeping tablets is entirely a construct of my own, even if that doesn’t diminish its force. Requires more thought. But for now, I need to get in a car with some mates and drive to the Empire.