Enchanted April

OK, I'm late - I know it's May, and late May to boot, but .... have you seen this film? You should.

It's enchanting.

I thought it was so enchanting that when we went to Italy in ummmm, '92 (? I think), I planned into our itinerary a special jog down to Positano and Sorrento. I imagined I would be the character played by Polly Walker. She just smiles and sits on a deck chair for large chunks of the movie.*

That's the life I desire. A life of indulgence. With servants. I would like Jeeves to run things. I would like a cook. And a maid. And a gardener. I would do things like make crepes and cakes - but only when I felt like it. I would muck about the perennial border, and then when I got bored of it, I'd leave it and the gardener would shake his head and flex his muscles and fix it. While I sipped a gin and tonic from my deck chair and watched through slitted eyes.

I read How to Be Idle a few months ago and the whole time was thinking I could have written this book. Maybe I should write some non-fiction. Yawn. Well, maybe after a nap.

I get a bit agitated reading some of your blogs. You all do SO much. How do you do it? I suspect many of you don't sleep much. In fact, very few people come out and say it, but a bit of sleuthing, a bit of digging through archives and scanning timestamps on posts, and the occasional "day in the life of" post confirmed that a number of you sleep a whole let less than I do.

This sleep thing has been such an issue in my life. See - this is embarassing, it feels like a character fault - I can't function on less than 8 hours. In fact, 8 is really a bare minimum. Too many weeks of just 8/night, and I really crash. I like 9. Or 10. That's hours. Of sleep.

I know. Terrible.

I've done the calculations. If I would sleep 2 hours less a night than I do, over the course of the year I'd have 730 extra hours. Whoa! That would be enough to plan meals, learn Latin, and maybe solve some deep mystery, like why children are incapable of putting the cap back on the toothpaste. That's 91.25 regular work days. About 2.25 work weeks.

And all I accomplish is drool spots on my pillow.

Well, comparing myself to well caffeinated insomniacs is getting me nowhere. I think it's time for a little afternoon siesta. And I'd better go zip that movie - it's been too long since I've watched it.

*That is not quite how it turned out. We got 'trapped' there by a combination of general strike and the Easter holidays, and instead of spending a couple days, ended up there for nearly a week. Each day we'd trek to the train station and be told that the trains weren't running that morning. Maybe in the afternoon. Or maybe tomorrow. We counted ourselves lucky to find a hotel which would keep us that long - the ones on our original short list were all full (because of the holiday). Both Positano and Sorrento were beautiful but quite full of English tourists. While walking through a quiet lane one day, Roo was kissed by a short old man who talked at us in such fast Italian that I couldn't make out what he was saying but we think he was happy to meet a Canadian.