Mermaid

Oh to be a mermaid by the sea,

Watching the waves crash on the beach,

The pebbles crunch under your feet.

Feet?

Your not a mermaid after all, simply a young girl with a vivid imagination.

Have you ever tried to make a cup of tea in the half light, quietly?

Well – this is how my morning has started. Actually it started 3 hours ago, when I couldn’t sleep.

We have gone away. Our usual early holiday to Centre Parcs.  We book a little break into the hotel. It usually gives us a well-earned rest from caring for my elderly and frail father in law. This time we have put carers in place, to make sure he is well supported when we are not there. But it has really created quite a lot of work before we leave, and has continued while we are away. Phone calls from health professionals, care agencies, estate agents.

It might give you an idea why my day started at 5am. My poor brain won’t switch off.

So after much tossing and turning, cover off, covers on & two trips to the toilet already – I decided to have a cup to tea. I was getting fed up with warm fizzy water.  

It was ‘dark’ in the room, heavy curtains shut the light from outside, except for a thin sliver shining through – straight onto my side of the bed. Every time I got up the sensor would turn the toilet light and fan on. There was a lovely warm towel radiator by the shower. Unfortunately it had a bright blue detector light on the bottom – filling the whole of the room in an eerie blue tinge.

Unfortunately none of these lights were any good for the tea making process! I had no light to see how much water I was filling the kettle with. I was filling it from a bathroom sink – shallow with not enough room to get the kettle in, without tipping half of it out when I took the kettle away. We have all been there haven’t we? But in the half light of a towel rail it doesn’t help.

I put the bed side light on hoping it wouldn’t wake my slumbering husband. No chance of that – if he has slept through the tossing, turning, blue light, toilet fan of the night – a little pin hole light wasn’t going to wake him up!

Not even the boiling kettle woke him up, the jangling of the cup, the ripping open of the bag of tea bags, the fridge opening and closing, the chinking of the cup on the saucer! Not even me typing on the lap top in the half-light could wake him!

I’ve had two cups of tea and a breakfast biscuit in a foil pouch, and he is still asleep.

Although I love the idea of being in the hotel, overlooking the lake – I do wonder if there is an advantage of a little lodge with a kitchen, a comfy sofa and a TV I could watch at 4.30am.  Without disturbing anyone else.

What do you think?