Paul Sladen

After eating, I am happy to reuse my plate, knife and chopsticks – A few crumbs from eating bread looks much the same, whether the plate was fresh from the cupboard at breakfast time or not!

My temptation for recycling the plate I use is balanced by wanting to avoid conflict and appease the people around me who would prefer everything to be washed after each meal. My compromise is that I tend to caché up my dishes and wash them once per day.

Because of this, the dish-washing is often the last thing I end up doing before bedtime; bedtime is signalled by completion of the washing-up and so frequently delayed by its non-completion… Owing to eczema on my right-hand, the washing up tends to leave my skin feeling dry and often sore (using Ecover helps a little bit in this regard), thus I procrastinate to avoid it, even if I enjoy washing-up per se.

Ideally I would like procrastinating not to be the case. I would prefer to round-off my day, spending the last hour without too much mental stimulation, to slow-down, settle and ready my mind for sleep.

For four months of my life, I went to bed everynight between before 19:00, waking up again at 04:00. Those were some of the most productive weeks I’ve ever spent (no getting distacted by crap television!). In the early morning I could listen to the birds, hear the absence of traffic noise and enjoy the silence. With 3 hours before anyone else woke up in the house I get a solid block of work completed, with my brain feeling fresh and my body full of energy.

Unfortunately, I’m a person who has a habit of getting engrossed in interesting projects late at night and in the intervening years the getting up early part became harder – a bout of illness in 2001 has left me needing around 10hours of sleep since.

Incidently, by writing this now, I’ve failed to go to bed by midnight, oops… :)

_The photo above isn’t me, but one I took in 2003 _

For the second night in a row, I’ve gone to bed with just candle-light. Yesterday I was given a beautiful sandlewood-scented candle, so I decided to use it; after all, what’s the point of having a candle if you keep it on the shelf looking pretty!

I didn’t have any matches, so I used a smaller candle to carry the flame up from the kitchen to my bedroom. Walking around a house in darkness, with the light following you and no need to grope for light-switches is magical; the orange flicking occasionally picks out details you won’t normally notice.

I haven’t walked with a candle like that for many years, the previous times I can remember were Christingle services held at the Steiner School just before Christmas. Only then we had silver foil or a piece of fruit to stop the hot wax dripping on your fingers…

Now I just have to remember to blow it out before I go to sleep, I don’t want my housemates waking me up to tell me that I’ve set the house on fire!

I now have 14 pairs of identical black socks (28 in total, except when I mislay the occasional one). I solved the problem of having to pair and match socks after they come out of the washing machine by only having ones that are the same, it’s a very useful thing to have done and this solution has served me well for several years!

There’s nothing magical about the ‘fourteen’ part (that I know of), but it is a rather handy two weeks supply and probably gives you a good idea of how often I like doing the washing!...

In addition I have one pair of big, blue and wooly walking socks, and these are also the emergency pair for when the washing didn’t quite manage to dry in time.

It would be interesting to number the black socks and see which “pairs” I end up wearing the most – perhaps when my brain is awake, I’ll be able to work out how many total possibilities there are (...or perhaps you could help me with the combinations!).