Susan Morrison: Phantom carpenter is disturbing my sleep

Published on Friday 13 November 2009 09:08

IT'S never a good idea to wake me at five in the morning, unless you plan a quick trip to casualty. But there was the husband, sticking his head out the curtains, muttering. I mean audibly muttering in the way he does when he wants someone to do something about whatever it is that's irked him. That someone is usually me.

He said there's someone sawing in the garden.

Just to recap there, folks, it was 5am on a bitterly cold November morning. For those of you who weren't awake, and why should you be, it was also very dark. But there was someone sawing in the back garden. At least, he said there was. I couldn't hear anything.

I still couldn't hear anything when I put on my bunny slippers and stomped about the garden, looking like Lady Macbeth in blue fleece jammies.

There was no-one sawing in the back garden.

The mystery was only solved a few nights ago, when I realised it wasn't a saw he had heard, but his own snoring. The husband has snored heroically for some time now, and in desperation I have tried everything to deal with the rumbling terror. He hasn't. He just sleeps through it.

There's a myth that only men snore. In the case of my late grandmother, for example, it was less of a snore and more of a super power. She could move furniture by one great rattle of the nasals.

He's working his way up to that. He's managed to get spare change dancing in a manner that would have the Most Haunted crew screaming into their night vision cameras.

I've tried sticky strips on his nose, lavender scented sachets, ear plugs and pillows that remember the shape of your head. Which is handy, since after a night's non-sleep, I have trouble recalling my name.

I was once advised to sew a hair brush to the back of his pyjama top to prevent roll back. He doesn't wear PJs. I got round this problem by sewing a hair brush to the sheet. I am nothing if not resourceful. It didn't work.

Someone recently pointed out to me that we now have access to a spare room, where I could sleep undisturbed. It's a thought, but where would I warm my icy feet?

Pavement rage

DEAR cyclist with the red jacket and blue helmet,

Gosh, you are absolutely right, I was walking along the pavement like I owned it. And I cannot disagree, what on earth was I thinking by having the stupidity to wear an MP3 player, thus making myself a menace to other pavement users like yourself. And as for my ridiculous behaviour in turning sharply to the right, without signalling any intention to do so, well, no wonder you rode slap into me, and into the unrelated buggy next to me.

You are again correct in pointing out that I am a woman not in the first flush of youth, that I have been known for certain eccentricities and, yes, I was distracted by the word 'sale'.

I shall, of course, never leave the house again without my indicators fitted, and I shall always check my mirrors before swerving sharply.

Can I just point out, cyclist with the red jacket and blue helmet, I was actually on the pavement, which is where I and other soft-shelled pedestrians should be.

And can I also reiterate, you two-wheeled cycle-thug, that, yes, I do wish you'd hurry up and let someone else access your organs, because the lucky recipient might just have a bit more sense than to ride a mountain bike on a pavement at night, hit a pedestrian and a buggy with a child in it and then scream abuse at them for, well, being on the pavement.

Oh, and one other thing, yes, I am quite proud of my language. You should have heard what I called you as you rode off.

But, of course, you couldn't. You were wearing an MP3 player, too.

Warfare in Leith

THINGS you only hear in Leith, part one in an occasional series.

There is a man in the supermarket, and he wants part three of a DVD about World War II being given away by some newspaper that manages to get in a froth about spelling.

Behind him stands one of Leith's more pungent sons, clutching a bottle of breakfast Buckie.

The supermarket does not have part three of World War II DVD, despite checking extensively and exhaustively. The Buckie buyer is becoming more and more irate and is beginning to oscillate slightly.

Man in supermarket insists that other branch of supermarket has part three of World War II DVD.

Jakey loses plot in front of me and howls "The Germans Looooast!!"

There we have it, my friends, the most seminal event of the 20th century explained in one quick lesson.

Next week, Jakey takes on the Titanic: "It sank!"