the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I’m thinking of the ‘Morecambe and Wise’ Christmas Special of 1971. You know, back when Christmas Specials were actually special. Anyway they had Andre Previn on, the world famous conductor, taking time off from his normal bus route to appear on the show. Ostensibly there to conduct an ornestra in a rendition of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, with Morecambe on piano. Previn halts proceedings when he accuses Morecambe of playing all the wrong notes.

To which Morecambe replies ‘I am playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order.’ That’s how my sleep has been over the last few days. The right amount of hours to be sure, but at the wrong time of day. Seven hours of sleep might be what one aims for, but if you start that seven hours at seven in the morning, like I did last night refreshed you are not.

And the worst thing is, that when you do wake up, you feel so knackered, so tired and so utterly butterly, that all you want to do is stay in bed. But you know that if you do that, then you’ll have another late one.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised last year when I heard to original version of this. Until that moment, I had no idea that the version I’d always assumed was the original, wasn’t.