Driech

Never in the English- pardon me - SCOTS language was a better word invented than that of 'driech'.

It can cover a multitude of matters from the weather to your mood, from the colour of a worn out old raincoat to the jaded attitude of a worn out old hack.

Today - is 'dreich'.

Melancholy, grey, damp round the edges, today has the feel of damp mouldy washing, that never quite dried, left to fester on an airer in a cold room, denied the benefit of being kissed dry by a warm sun. Dank. Mouldy. October.

Is it any wonder that the faces of folk you pass look like slack bleached sack cloth, pock marked with the chill, eyes sunken, blacked and bagged with the weary knowledge that we have months of this ahead.

Dreary. Having to drag chilly bones from the enveloping warmth of a feather down quilt, still emanating the collected body heat of the night's rest - or in my case unrest!

Insomnia - is dreich. It's tiresome, tedious, monotonous, soul-draining, and incomprehensible. Why when your body is sagging with tiredness, and your mouth is clawed by un-stifflable yawns do you lay on your bed awake, for hours, watching the florescent numbers of the alarm clock liquidly morph from 2 to 3 to 4, each hour bringing you closer to the inevitable, respite denied. Sleep deprivation is never good but it can be endured if there is an understandable reason for it. Such as when you have an infant squalling for milk at 3 am, or a sick child running a temperature, or an exam the next day which you feel under prepared for, or an essay which is a 1000 words short of its limit, but when it seems a matter of your own mind working against you - for no justifiable cause or reason - it sucks!

I make no apology for today's dreichness, or my own dreichness for that matter. I am tired. Headachey, tired and weary. It wouldn't have been so bad if, after an endless night, the sun had deigned to make its presence felt ... but no. I am clearly experiencing Dante's inferno... the question is a matter of simply working out exactly which level of hell I am on.