Brinkburn Priory Northumberland

Brinkburn

Can you spot the lady in black ?

Can't Sleep ? Insomnia remedy which defeats even staring cats

The recent debates about staring cats and cats standing on heads and my own diffculties with waking at four am and having to read for a while before attempting sleep again prompt me to write about a sleep cure which I learned from Yvonne Dolan , a psychotherapist working in Denver Yvonne Dolan - School of Continuing Education, University Of Wisconsin - Milwa . This was taught to me at a conference and I wasn't at all confident it would work , but at that time I had a very young baby and really had no difficulty at all sleeping , but it has stood me in good stead in recent years so I pass it on to anyone who needs it .

My first piece of advice is to get yourself comfortable whatever this takes . For some this might mean re making the bed slightly , turning the pillows round or whatever , even dislodging some cats in my case . I often wake with a headache and might need to take something for that , or drink some water .

Then make some effort to lie flat on my back and in a straight line ( the way I was taught in yoga relaxation ) . Some people may chose to run through the rituals of relaxing all the muscles of the body starting at the toes and running up the body to the head . Ive personally never found this very useful but lots of people do . But I do like to be physically aligned .

The Yvonne Dolan ritual is this . It sounds complex but is actually very simple .
In your head you are counting things that you can see , hear , and feel . I usually start with three things . Thus

You say to yourself ( in your head or you could say it out loud if you sleep alone )
I can see (and you choose three things you can see in your line of vision, trying to keep your head still and your yes more or less focused on one spot ) ...... eg the edge of the radiator , the towel on the end of my bed and the duvet on my bed

then you say what you can hear
I can hear ...... the sound of the cat purring in my ear
the sound of a bird singing out of the window
the sound of a tapping noise outside

( if you cant hear three things you can just repeat the same thing again ... eg I can hear the cat purring still )

then you say what you can feel .....
I can feel .... the warmth of the bed under my back
I can feel the duvet resting on my feet
I can feel the duvet on my feet again

when you have done three things you step up to four things
So I can see four things
hear four things
feel four things

then see five
hear five
feel five

and keep going till you fall asleep ....... of course in practice you lose your place and go back to one ( some people prefer to start at one , I always start at three ) , or your mind wanders .

This was me at four am this morning .

I settle myself after ten minutes of reading Blackthorn Winter by Sarah Challis . A great read along the lines of a woman upping sticks after her husband leaves for another woman and is then imprisoned for Fraud in the City and moving to a little village and becoming a cook in the village school etc etc .
Kitty is happily esconsed under my chin .
Toby is at the leg end .

The three things I can see are..... fairly mundane and whipped through in no time . I try to talk to myself in slow hypnotic tones albeit in my head as instructed , and come to the hearing part . I can hear ... Kitty purring in my head ..........and Kitty purring even louder in my head and now I am wondering if she has climbed right inside my eardrum here and how on earth I am ever supposed to get back to sleep with that racket going on ... and I can hear about fifty seven really loud chuffin' birds all squawking outside the window on the telegraph wire or in the tree or wherever they are all trying to stop me getting back to sleep I wonder what time it is now anyway Ive lost my place is that three things ?

I can feel ... what can I feel , I can feel the water bed lovely and warm under my right buttock funny word that , imagine Laura's physiotherapist saying her buttock was paltry I know they're a different shape to mine but I'd always assumed that was down to the choice of underwear ( involuntary giggle at this point not particularly conducive to sleep , causing the cat to scarper ) , but it seems now its all down to something quite other , tut , what else can I feel , I can feel a distinctive itch in my lower left shin which if I bend down to scratch it is going to cause alarm at Toby's end , and I can feel ........ long pause .......bed again under me .

But , despite being very distracted , that is as much as I can recall , so I must have been asleep again in a minute or two .
It sounds complicated and its really remarkably simple .
Basically you bore yourself to sleep .

For cat lovers ( or temporary haters ) everywhere

Much speculation as a result of a post on the Wide Lawns Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds blog about why her cat would be standing on her head staring at her during the night , (which is something Kitty often does) , includes her fabulous cartoon drawing of her cat with the most amazing expression on its face .
There has been a veritable plethora of ideas as to why the cat is behaving like this , many inclining to the view that Ms Wide Lawns must be suffering some kind of disease or is pregnant and should in any event seek immediate medical assistance . If she wasn't ill before making the post I'm sure she is by now .
However someone posted the following clip from youtube which I found spectacularly accurate and I add for your amusement . let me know what you think .
Does this cat remind YOU of anyone ?

YouTube - Simon's Cat 'Cat Man Do'

New Baby for Rachel and Tim

What a month it must have been for Rachel and Tim . We Love You Freddie Fred's anniversary not a few days ago and now , Brilliant news , a new baby girl Heidi was born yesterday . So far the details are on Facebook but no doubt Tim will be updating the blog soon too . Exhausting Day Job day for me yesterday travelling several hours by car to Ulverston for a meeting so great to return home at seven thirty ,log onto facebook and find message and photos of baby Heidi and both Rachel and Tim looking radiant . Heidi looks so like Fred in all the photos I've seen of him , (bearing in mind that I haven't met any of these people of course ), and I try to imagine how that might feel .

Way back last year I often tried to imagine how any of it might feel to them , to have a baby seriously ill , whom you were always hoping would get well again , living your lives on a hospital ward , trying to keep sane , not to give up hope , trying to give your baby the best days possible every day , attending to your relationship , still seeing your families , watching life going on solely through the eyes of others , through tv , news , the laptop , the blog , your visitors , your friends and the occasional foray into the outside world .

As I was ill myself for part of that spell , I had time on my hands , and much space in my head for reflection . Much of the time though I just couldn't even bear to think how it felt to be in Tim's head , or Rachel's .
They had no choice .
And yet , as people do , they survived , and here they are , with a new baby girl and a whole new chapter .
Look he's done it already .. a new blog I mean .....One more little person joins us....

Idyllic afternoon at my sister's . The invasion .

The top picture shows Grommit the dog with his " when are they going home ? " face .

Alice is much calmer now on visits out and no longer bullies him quite so mercilessly , but still , Grommit prefers the quiet life and Alice loves to race about the huge garden and the outside farm and coutryside pretending to be a Northumberland and not just a seaside greyhound . And sometimes this involves leaping right over smaller terriers or pecking their necks and seeing what they do , and then barking madly at a passing farm bike ( a loud fart machine of a yellow quad bike thing ) , then going crazy when a man on the opposite hillside starts shooting at pheasants . All of these things give Grommit something of a headache when he is trying to relax in his own garden keeping an eye on his guinea pigs . And then she wears herself out and flops down on the newly grown aquileagias . Pah! There are other unmentionable things she does in the corner of the garden too , which involve people having to scuttle about with poop scoops and the like .

Once the sun has gone down and the cooking has started and people are chat chatting and paying no attention to dogs and what she is up to she is squeezing herself into his basket and then , horrors , helping herself to his toys , sniffing out his carefully secreted Nylabone from its hidey hole and tossing it willy nilly about the place without so much as a by your leave . Then its the special ball with the protruberances from his Christmas stocking 06 , which she has the nerve to fall asleep with , under her paw , as if she planned to take it home . And all the while the two sisters talk and talk and that camera is out trying to get pictures of Grommit squashed up in his basket when the poor lad daren't close his eyes for fear of what might happen next , despite the fact that he is dead on his feet .

Idyllic afternoon for whom exactly ?

Alice is exhausted today , head under the cushion in " do not disturb " fashion .

I know how she feels .

I missed the morning walk and stayed in bed , too much sun , too many things I shouldn't have eaten .

Three of Nat's friends were rescued off the rocks between Cullercoats and Longsands by the Lifeboat yesterday , caught by the incoming tide .

So glad she was with me .

Craster harbour ... lobster run

As we arrived the boat pulled in and a tense scene unfolded with a BMW pulling up as close as it could to the pier ( pier ? I am unsure of the terminology here ) . A woman and a man jumped out and ran over to the boat where men were hauling up a box of precious cargo . Four lobsters . An elderly man at the top waved his arms and offered his opinions about where the fishermen had gone wrong , why their returns had been so poor , but was met with a stony silence as the men unloaded the four unfortunates , all waving spines and wiry bits .

The lobsters were dropped into the buckets , transferred into the buckets and into the back of the BMW by the blonde haired woman , who looked so chic she could have been a model or an actress . The car reversed and drove off at a fast pace . The whole scene was fast paced and we were caught in the middle of it , onlookers , not quick enough and also slightly intimidated to take pictures of the transactions . It felt as if we had witnessed something not quite ok . A handing over of guns , or smuggled diamonds .

Meanwhile against the harbour wall a man with the appearance of an academic reading a newspaper , shoes and socks removed in the sun . I was too shy to ask for a photo . I looked at him with longing , but I couldn't do it .

Why was he not working , on a Thursday ? Does his week end on a Wednesday evening ? Was he skiving in the sun ? A lunch break ? Why my endless curiosity about everyone else's lives ?