(No) Fear of the Dark

The Fates colluded yesterday to leave me the house to myself in the evening. The lady wife was off in Birmingham at an overnight course and the kids were having a sleepover as I had been invited to Amazon’s Summer BBQ. As the hailstones fall as I’m writing this, I’m smirking at the idea of a summer BBQ but it was good fun and it’s always nice to get out occasionally.

So I returned home to an empty house at around 8:15. If I’d been a little earlier, I’d probably have paid the few quid for a day pass to Sky Sports and watched the Chelsea Southampton game but I didn’t, so I didn’t. The kids get grumpy when I sit down to watch football, so instead I watched a couple of episodes of Netflix’s new show Iron Fist. This was more involved than I initially anticipated as I had forgotten we’d set a pin on the adult profile to stop the kids watching age inappropriate stuff. When all the 4 digit pins I could remember failed to work, I had to resort to an email search, which was time consuming. You can read my thoughts on Iron Fist here.

It was around half past ten when I made it up to bed, having remembered to load and unload the dishwasher and feed the cat. I managed to do something that I don’t think we’ve done in perhaps 10 years, I went to sleep in the dark, with all the lights turned off. I’m not suggesting that the couple of beers I had at the BBQ didn’t help, but sleeping in proper darkness really makes a difference to quality of sleep. Our bedroom doors all have a glass panel above the door that lets light from the landing in and as long as I can remember (certainly since potty training) we’ve left the bathroom light on as both a nightlight and a guide for children in need of a wee. It’s also got one of those drawstring switches that makes a very audible click when you turn it on and off, another factor in leaving it on.

It was pitch dark when I went to sleep- we’re lucky that our estate, built in the late 60’s, is spread out enough that we don’t get light pollution from the neighbours and the street lights go off at around 11pm too. I went to sleep quickly and deeply and it was great.

Of course the kids will be back tonight, so the bathroom light will be on (don’t worry, it’s only an energy efficient LED bulb, so it won’t cost us much over the course of a year) and no doubt my sleep with suffer as a result. But it was nice.

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