Too many all-nighters

Just along from my house. It was very very cold and windy

I wrote a week or two ago that I usually end up staying up all night about twice a year. I'm now on the third time in two weeks. First there was the leaflet writing session before the Sutherland protest. Then on Friday evening, after the People and Planet AIDS Day party and my walk through Leicester Square and Regent St with R, I got back home about midnight and sat down to write up the events of the past three days, thinking it would take maybe an hour or two.

I was at it untill 8.30.

It was partly because the system chewed up what I wrote, after I spent ages putting all the photos in, so I had to start again (fortunately not writing it all, as I always write in WordPad and then copy and paste, just the formatting and photos)- but that didn't take that long. Mostly it was just getting it all down in the first place, which took 5 or 6 hours.

And now I'm up again- I spent the reasonable hours of the evening (up to midnight) making a noticeboard heading and a poster in my capacity as Sustainability Champion*, so then I had to spend the unreasonable hours (midnight till 5) doing the really important stuff, ie slides for my part of the Group Project presentation (real thing on Tuesday, but we're meeting up to practice tomorrow. That is, today). All stuff I should have done over the weekend. But I spent most of Saturday recovering from two nights with barely any sleep, and didn't wake up till lunchtime today (that is, yesterday), then spent the afternoon beginning the noticeboard heading. I was actually at home for the weekend, incidentally- I went home on Saturday after Friday's all-nighter; I dozed off on the tube and woke to see 'Paddington' through the windows, but the doors had closed before I had time to get up, so I had to go one more stop and come back. I purposefully napped on the train, and then accidentally in spite of trying not to napped in the car on the way from the station. I kept awake till after lunch, then went upstairs and slept till about six. Watched TV with my parents after supper and then more sleep (at the conventional time this time). I had wanted to go and hear my mum play Christmas music with her brass band outside Waitrose in Stroud, but as she was at a sign language class earlier in the day and not coming back between it would have meant driving myself, and given how I was falling asleep no matter how hard I tried not to, I decided this was not a good idea. If it had been the evening rather than the afternoon though I would have had a nap first, and then gone.

So I didn't really see my parents that much over the weekend. Still, as well as watching TV together, there were mealtimes, and on Sunday Mum was making the Christmas pudding while I was making my heading, and then we went for a walk with my brother's dog (he was home too incidentally). And on Saturday, after watching TV, Mum spent quite a while on the piano trying out chords with various pieces (one of the programs was a music program about harmony) and I was watching her and keeping her company**.

The walk was very cold and windy. And you could really hear the wind last night as well. I heard on the radio that they had winds of more than 100 mph on the South Coast of Wales, and of 80-90 mph in many other places. It really is winter. Sadly I missed autumn- I've seen a few coloured trees around in London lately but, I realised in one of my awake moments in the car going home, last time I was back (late October), the trees were all green. It did take a little while to work what was different, but this time they were all bare.

Now I'm finally prepared to accept that Christmas is on its way. I was listening to some Christmas music earlier, and have opened three windows of my advent calendar (happily my brother and I are not considered to old for advent calendars or stockings). Doesn't mean I've started thinking about Christmas shopping though...

I'll be back home for the holidays from next week, though very busy with two projects, so I'll be able to spend more time then.

*there's a better way to phrase that (there's got to be) but my brain's not working well enough to find it
**ditto