I sometimes have trouble getting to sleep.  Usually only on days ending in a “y”.  I call it Living on London Time.  I’m on the west coast of California.  Ok, a bit inland but an hours drive to the coast.

I think my insomnia started when I was a sophmore in High School, way back in the last century.  I could name the number of years but that either way it’s a long time ago.  My parents had divorced, and I was living with my mother, who decided to move back to her childhood home in San Francisco.  One of those houses that looks like it’s two stories tall from the front and becomes three and a half from the back.  It was the only house that I’ve lived in with a basement that was above ground on one side.

Anyway, after looking at a couple of public schools, and being informed I would be beat up – and this from the adult showing us around, I was enrolled in a private school.  It was a day school, which meant I traveled by bus (No BART back then) to and from school.  It started in the morning around 8:00 am and was over around 2 pm.  The only problem was it was about a block or two north of Golden Gate Park.  And we were way down in the Mission Excelsior District.

This meant that in order to get to school on time I had to walk a block to the bus stop, catch the 6:00am bus, basically taking it the short distance until it crossed the 280 Freeway, and then transfer to the bus that would take me within a block of the school.  It would only take about a hour, but luckily for me there was a public laundramat right there were I could stay warm and check my homework until the school opened, usually between 7:30 and 7:45am.

After school I would repeat the process in the other direction, and since we did not  have a lunch hour at the school when I got off the bus the first thing I would do is go into the store next to the bus stop and buy a fresh made deli sandwich.  No doubt it was Ham and Cheese of some type. Still my favorite sandwich.

So I would get home, have lunch, and then go to bed.  That’s right. I went to sleep.  I would wake up around 11:00 p.m., see if there was anything to eat, watch Johnny Carson (I had my own room in the basement, and my own TV.)  and then do homework, read, and whatever.  Then around 5:00 am have breakfast, get ready, and repeat the process.  This went on for about six months or so.  My grades were excellent.  Subjects I had been doing poorly in I now understood.  And the Blonde teacher who taught us French was nice looking and wore low cut blouses.  So that was a plus.

But it all came to an end.  My Parents decided it was best if I went to live back where I grew up and with my Dad.  So goodbye school.

I have, in my life, held jobs where I’ve had to get up early, and those where I did not go to sleep until the wee hours.  So every now and then, I still find myself Living on London Time.  Until I get to London.  And then I have jet lag like everyone else.