Teething

(Developmental stage)



NEILL says:

I am unable to give an accurate review of the subjective experience of teething, as it was quite a long time ago and I don't really remember all the details. But I would imagine I didn't particularly enjoy it. What I can give you is an all-too-comprehensive account of the experience from the other side, as the parent of a teething one-year-old. Essentially, in layman's terms for those of you who are fortunate enough to not yet have spawned offspring of your own: it involves a lot of being awake when you would prefer not to be awake. One's nights become a soul-destroying routine of being wrenched from pleasant dreams¹ to spend several hours going through a futile cycle of milk bottles, teething gel, Calpol and "oh just leave him, he'll surely stop crying sooner or later". (He doesn't). Of course, when you do finally manage to successfully get the screaming ratbag back off to sleep, the mind then chooses just that moment to rebel and experience a perversely ill-timed bout of insomnia, and you end up lying in bed for hours in the middle of the night worrying and wondering about topics as diverse as whether the kid's okay, the global economic crisis and its likely impact on your mortgage, and whether this would be an appropriate time to get up and have that leftover ham in a nice sandwich with maybe a glass of milk.

I once heard about a scientific study which found that the impact of small-baby-enforced insomnia on one's mental acuity and intelligence levels was functionally equivalent to experiencing a mild but significant form of brain damage, and the only thing I can say about that is "well, duh." I do feel it gives one a peculiar insight into one's own parents. Have you ever wondered why your Mum and Dad were so weird? Well, it's because you, by the sheer fact of your existence and basic needs as a human infant, systematically destroyed their mental stability, judgement and decision-making abilities to the point where wearing corduroy trousers with bicycle clips seemed like a good idea. Are you happy now?

2/10

¹ Tonight's, since you asked: with the assistance of Marvel supervillains and Thor adversaries the 'Wrecking Crew', I was helping that woman out of the first couple of series of Teachers move her new soapmaking business' stock of Bath Bombs out of her old premises and onto a nice new canal narrowboat HQ, and everyone present was very impressed that I could carry the whole sofa on my back with no assistance.

Waking up

(Transitional state of awareness)

NEILL says:

Increasingly these days I am inclined to think of consciousness as being essentially cyclical in nature. One's thought processes on any given day will generally consist of about five or six topics which will just repeat in cycles of varying frequency, over and over and over again. These five topics can generally be broken down into a fairly small number of major categories: sex, food and work being the biggies, with a couple of spots reserved for one's current cirumstances and major preoccupations of choice. I've drawn a handy diagram to illustrate this, what I would like to call 'Cameron's Theory of Orbital Consciousness'. Pay attention now, you'll probably see this repeated in the next edition of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy...



That's just me, anyway. The composition and relative frequency of the cycles will vary in accordance with various factors, notably age, gender, social position and level of drunkenness. The frequency of a cycle is hugely variable: to take one example: on the fateful day that young James got wed, for the roughly one-hour period that I in my Best Man-ly role was actually in possession of the wedding bands, the single thought 'Shit! Have I lost the rings?' increased in frequency till it was cycling at a rate of approximately once every two point five seconds during the final minutes before I got to give them to the vicar and breathe a massive sigh of relief. Once something has been running on such a 'hot cycle' it cannot simply disappear, and for the rest of the day (indeed, the week) I was still having sudden panics and checking my pockets, albeit with increasingly long gaps in between. It's been a couple of weeks now, and I think I'm okay, but I would not in the least be surprised if I find myself years from now, tramping up a mountainside in some far-flung part of Asia, suddenly thinking to myself 'Fuck! Where are the rings?'

Anyway, waking up: the great thing about waking up is that it is a chance to observe this process kicking in: you can take a few moments on waking to to simply lie there and pay attention to the first cycle of the day lazily running its course. By noting the first five things that drift through your slowly activating brain, you will get an exclusive teaser preview of what you are in fact going to be thinking about all day. For example, on my first attempt at this exercise, my first 5 thoughts covered the following subjects:

• this girl that I like


• giant robots


• how to lay out the first two panels of the page I'm working on


• how 'Quality' by Talib Kweli really is a fantastic album and certainly deserves a better mark than I gave it in my review


• how consciousness is essentially cyclical in nature and I should really get around to writing something about it some time

That was one day at random, but to be fair, it could have been any day of my life for the last couple of years. Sex, comics, hip-hop and philosophy. You'll notice how my actual JOB doesn't even get a look-in there...

I would invite all our readers to partake of this simple exercise; it's an extremely easy and often highly revealing bit of self-analyis; a kind of quick mental daily diagnostic (although it can be quite hard to remember, as you tend to be a bit sleepy at the time.) I would further invite all our readers to post, here, on the messageboard or via e-mail, their lists of the first five things they think about in the morning. In this way I hope to compile a psychic census of the nation, or at least of our glamorous and bohemian little corner of it. It'll be fun, and when I'm on 'Richard & Judy' selling my best-selling pop-psychological book on the subject I promise to send you all a postcard.

6.2/10

Sleep

(Unconscious state)
As Requested by Guest Reviewer Debbie



JAMES says:

It takes up more of our life than anything else, unless we’re Yuppies or ‘Beats’, and great recording artists such as Marion, Heavy Stereo and Suggs have been inspired to write songs about it. But how much do we really know about sleep? Sometimes when I was drifting off to sleep, in that odd between time, I used to think that no one ever actually fell asleep, they just lay there unmoving but conscious all night, until we forgot about it each and every morning. But I was wrong, obviously.

There are two types of sleep. Evening Sleep is the big black void of sleep, and it is vitally important to relationships to have similar Evening Sleep patterns. No one likes lying awake in bed while their partner luxuriates in the soft velvety luxury of a deep sleep, but on the other hand no one likes being wakened in the middle of the night to be informed by their significant other that unlike yourself they can’t get to sleep. Surely this news can wait til morning?

Morning Sleep is a different beast, especially when hungover or having a lie in. Here you drift in and out of consciousness, with strange lucid dreams. In fact, most of my best creative ideas come from this period. Or at least ideas which seem great at the time but in the cold light of day unfortunately turn out to be garbled nonsense that would make David Lynch look at you with a mixture of confusion and pity. On the other hand, sometimes you can fall into the most hideous morning sleep traps of all, getting a song trapped in your head, which you only actually know a few lines of. After one particularly heavy session I spent about half an hour in the morning with one verse of ‘Living La Vida Loca’ by Ricky Martin going round and round and round…

Still, sleep is great. When I was a moody teenager I used to think I enjoyed sleep more than anything, and to this day I still try and set aside a good eight and a half hour slot each day for me to catch my z’s within. The effect it can have on your waking life is immense, and the world can seem a simply ripping place with a good stock of nap behind you. On the other hand, as Leonard Nimoy noted in his seminal ‘Spock Thoughts’, ‘do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue.’

Therefore, Hooray for Sleep!

7.8/10