Batty Betty

Some of us "of an age" have strange waking habits. Having no need to go out to work as once we did for years and years, but continue to enjoy active minds, we take on strange hours. For example, the need to slip into a lovely daytime nap when that siesta time arrives and later, about three in the morning or four, we rise from our night sleep and go on the "owl prowl". Each human bat or owl will take their cup of indulgence - mine being coffee laced with a modicum of Bailey's  to replace sugar and cream but to inject flavour - and repair to either their computer chair, their recliner or as I, the big, cosy leather couch beside the favorite lamp. With coffee close by and a book in hand, I indulge in the quiet of the early hours with no traffic noise, no neighbour gab and all-black-out windows There may be robbers and other denizens of the dark out there, but they aren't part of my world and thus do not exist. Here I am free to enter the world of fiction or as of late, biography and thus become someone else, somewhere else. Often I gravitate to the computer and feeling the need to write, do the letters I dare not send and the autobiography I don't seem to be able to stick to. It's an indulgent time. I don't have to make-up or dress in anything but the old bathrobe and the coffee tastes superb at this hour. There are no phone calls and no television and housework does not nag. But it is not all pleasant. It is also a time when guilt can creep in and regret enter. Omissions, too late to fix and fears that lurk behind the daytime tasks, come out of the woodwork to haunt and nag and whine for solutions. The latter don't last too long because the general charisma of the moment creeps in and negatives fade away. Ideas flood in that couldn't during the day and creativity peaks. Why didn't I think of that before, you plead and put your mind to making a list of what to do about it - manana. Ah, manana is on the other side of the universe and it never happens and as your mind fills with random thoughts, you find yourself going places you would not dare to during the day. There is truly something indulgently comforting about three in the morning, a time of finding yourself.