Monday 8 September 2008

Does Tesco carpark hold the Mystery of Life?

I'm not sure it is possible to be more tired than I am right now. Last night it was imperative that I had an early night as I had to be up at half past four in the morning to take my parents to the airport. The urgent need for sleep naturally meant that I had a bought of insomnia that kept me awake until 1.00 o'clock in the morning. 3 1/2 hours sleep followed by a 160 mile round trip today has not left me in the best of states.

Having got them to Manchester airport at some filthy hour of the morning I then had two hours to kill before I could go to my first meeting. I ended up sitting in a Tesco carpark dozing intermittently whilst listening to the radio and desperately trying to finish reading one of my book club novels. I can now say that Tesco car parks have very little merit on any front at all, other than their proximity to a supermarket that is.....

I finally staggered home and made it to the computer to discover that the book club for tomorrow night has been cancelled. This is intensely vexing having gagged my way through The Little White Horse (due to the vast quantity of mothers in the book club we have a childrens book section as well as a grown up book section), and also waded my way through 'What a Carve Up' whilst half asleep in the aforementioned car park. As this was a book which I thought was extremely irritating, badly plotted and massively overlong this was no mean feat. All that for nothing. Darn it. It is quite definitely going to be one of those days.....

During my tossing and turning in the depth of the nights there was a programme on Radio 4 about living in the moment. According to the guest they were interviewing, we should all live in the moment rather than constantly looking forwards, as it would lead us to discover "the wonderful mystery of life". Really, truly that is what he said.

He then went on to illustrate this point; apparently he once set off to go for a walk. He drove to the start of said ramble but when he got to the car park, he decided to 'be in the moment' instead of looking forward to his stroll. He promptly got so distracted being 'in the moment' and by the deep, meaningful beauty of a tarmaced car park that he never actually went for a walk but instead stood about like a loon, being overcome by the 'mystery of the moment' before turning round and going home.

Is he deranged? Is the mystery of life really going to be solved or even glimpsed in a car park? I spent two hours in one this morning and didn't even get a glimpse of a tiny Nancy Drew style mystery, let alone a mystery that affected my view of 'life, the universe and everything'. Perhaps he has found a better quality of car park than I have?

It did lead me to think though. It is incredibly hard not to have all your thoughts dominated by what is happening next, rather than what is happening now. (At the moment I am wondering how soon I can go to bed and get some sleep). I suppose that he did have a point about appreciating the now, rather than constantly planning for the future. There is one flaw in his plan though (ok, more than one flaw); he was forgetting that sometimes it is only the prospect of the promised sleep / cake / caffeine injection in my imminent future that gets me through the now..... Without that prospect I could quite possibly give up entirely and never leave the Tesco carpark......

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

42

Anonymous said...

It's always the way isn't it - when you really need to sleep it doesn't happen. I went to bed early last night because I was utterly exhausted, but the minute I got into bed and closed my eyes I was wode awake again and remained that way for the next four hours.

I've tagged you for a meme thing by the way. Only if you want to do it.

Welsh Girl said...

Mia-oia - Nice Hitchhikers reference - i wondered if anyone would notice!

Bevchen- getting on with the Meme thing now (should be working but it looks much more fun....)

Anonymous said...

I noticed! I wanted to say 42 but thought it would look a bit silly if I said it after Mia-oia

Anonymous said...

Cheers.
@bevchen - pipped at the post ;-) better luck next time :-)

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