Evidence that I probably should have gone to bed an hour ago

Here are some items I can see from where I'm sitting in my living room (oh yes, oh yes, I know how to build up the tension with my first sentence ...)

Item 1. An upside down cushion on the sofa with a cheesy picture of a cat, surrounded by flowers, on it.  The cat therefore looks as though it's standing on its head.  From where I am, it's looking at me gloomily as if to say, 'Will you put me the right way up, woman?  This is undignified.'  But, as I have said to it many times, there's no point me putting it the right way up and fluffing it up and making it look all nice when THERE'S A MAN IN THE HOUSE WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND CUSHIONS.  After all, what man does understand cushions, and putting them the right way up, and fluffing them, and making them look like a decorative item rather than a misshapen lump?  What man realises that cushions are meant to sit nicely in the small of one's back and not under one's thighs, being pulped to perdition?  (Any men reading are very welcome to defend themselves.  But I won't believe you.)

NB  Any regular readers thinking ... 'Fran has a cushion with a cheesy cat and flowers picture on it?' are very accurate in their estimations.  There is some kind of nostalgic, sentimental reason why I keep this cushion cover.  If only I could remember what it was.  All I know is that, should I send it to the second-hand shop, supernatural revengeful powers will be unleashed and I will be visited by gargoyles and harpies in the night.  Not convenient, when you're trying to get more than three hours' sleep without tossing and turning about whether you typed a worksheet with enough instructions on it.

Item 2. A Monet print on the wall above my head.  The thing about Monet is, he's good value, because even when the picture has been in the sun for many summers, and therefore has faded to oblivion, it still looks like a Monet.  I swear at one point the flowers were brighter, and the woman with the parasol was slightly more defined, but who cares.  It's impressionist, innit?  And impression is all that's left of this particular print.  The day someone visits and says, 'I like that abstract painting you have up there, all muted pinks and blues but with no particular images' I will take the picture down, remove the glass, stipple it a bit with a paintbrush bearing a few dabs of paint in vaguely recognisable 'woman with parasol' and 'flower' shapes, and put it back up.  Yay!  Another 10 years of good use.  A Monet-saving device indeed.

Item 3. A magazine rack stuffed as tight as a fat lady's corsets with unread magazines and papers.  Do you have one of these magazine racks, too?  It looks so inviting, but I would need a year off to catch up with all the writing magazines and teaching magazines and copies of the Sunday supplements that I always intend to read at the weekends but never do.  In there are also Christmas catalogues from which I never ordered anything in the end because it cost £14.99 for the postage even if all you wanted was a three-centimetre high nodding grandma.  There are big fat 'Come and Stay in Wales/Cornwall/an updated pigsty we gave three stars to' brochures.  And there are crossword puzzle books with each puzzle half-done and abandoned in a very unsatisfactory manner at the point when I filled in a 14 letter clue and then realised it was wrong and I'd done it in thick black pen.  I suspect that, at the bottom of the magazine rack, there are also toast crumbs, fourteen lost pens and information about 'what's happening in Warwickshire' dating back to 2009.

Something else I can see from where I'm sitting is my watch, and it says a quarter to ten, which feels like VERY LATE when you woke up at five from a dream about arriving at registration period in nothing but pink slippers and a nurse's uniform.  So, I am off to bed where I will listen to precisely twenty-six seconds of the ten o'clock news on the radio before I'll be snoring like a horse with long-term catarrh.

He kept telling her she snored, but she swore blind she was just practising her bee impressions for when there was 10 minutes spare at the end of lessons and she didn't know what else to teach them.