Restless was the word that perfectly described the state of Alf Snagg’s sleep.He slept and awoke.Slept again and awoke.It was sub zero outside while he snored occasionally and loudly sub duvet. He listened to the silence and was aware of a lighter darkness than usual on bedroom curtains. Why was it unusually light in the amplified silence of this December night? It seemed he rarely slept the sleep of angels these days.Anxiety had become a regular feature of his disturbed reverie.There was always something rooting around in the depths of his subconscious. Things that never made sense but just made a nuisance of themselves by denying a man in later years the peace and pleasure of perfect rest. Most nights he suffered the intrusion of Sleepbugs and Dreamgerms.Snagg looked at his watch but couldn’t see the time. In yawning grumpiness he reached out for the light switch. It was 3.30a.m.Small scratching sounds came from the bungalow ceiling area.Some bird or beast had obviously got into the loft space. Or was it birds/ beasts plural?Alf Snagg tried desparately to relax and go back to sleep. This was not easy. The thought that while he slept rats might be scurrying overhead was not an easy thought to dispel.
Snagg slid back into Dreamgerms like some Freeview channel over which he had no wand to control, magic or otherwise;
A huge pig looked at him,belched and lit up a cigar.A railway bridge spanned a dried-up river and a man with a beard and a striped deckchair said “you’ve got to vote next week or you will have to buy a knitting machine for your father. Then SHE turned up again and gave him the full-lipstick smile – he always knew she would come back. And then he awoke again . Again ! There was still light in the darkness and silence once more. That nightime held the silence of snowfall.
Alf Snagg parted the curtains just fractionally. He didn’t really want any invasion of the world outside just yet but needed an escape from dreams that threatened his happiness, however much that was. Snowflakes fluttered down in streetlight, singular, separate and free. Descending to become an insignificant molecule in a ground-covering blanket that hushed the breathing earth , clothed its fields and scarved the leafless hedges. Now a small part of the awakening winter morning, Alf decided to embrace the snowy world with his indecision on what he would do next. Read the bible? Go fishing? Do some yoga? Phone the Samaritans? Hoover the carpet? or just switch the radio on and listen to early morning BBC Radio 4 and play his regular silly game of seeing how many seconds it would be before the word Brexit was uttered. But the word Absolutely invariably won out in a competition between the two words.Why was our language now so heavily concentrated in adopted Americanisms? In this age of abbreviations Alf couldn’t work out how ‘absolutely’ with its 10 letters was constantly used in preference to ‘yes’ which had 3. Everything is ‘amazing’ he thought (possibly the most overused adjective in contemporary English ? language). Alf questioned himself on how he was feeling following sleep deprivation. ‘Not too bad’ was now replaced with ‘I’m good’. After an early breakfast he would do something ‘cool’ and go for a walk in the virgin snow.
GUESS WHAT LITTLE ALF 