Red Wine ­Cordial

I barely slept last night. I just lay in bed, bored - for what seemed like hours. Trying not to roll around or moan and groan too much to avoid waking Re. Eventually I got up and tip-toed around the house.

A drink of water, a pee, a warm blanket and on the sofa with my laptop. Too tired to do anything intelligent I created a Tik-tok account and scrolled through that. A waste of time, I tried the same in Instagram, rubbish. Facebook full of the same people reposting the same shite. I shut the lid and lay on the lumpy sofa wondering why I could not sleep.

I had done every sleeping exercise I could think of circular breathing, meditations and of course, avoiding screens immediately before bed. What was I doing in the evening before bed?
Well, I had watched the Banshees of Inisherin. In it Martin McDonagh directs Colin Farrell (as Pádraic) and Brendan Gleeson (as Colm) as he did previously in the film, In Bruges. I found the film unsettling.

Colm unexepectedly cuts off his lifelong friendship with Pádraic for no obvious reason. Pádraic is left bereft. This element of the plot hit me hard and immediately reminded me of when my brother Charlie did the same to me. Pádraic keeps trying to make sense of Colms decision and without me giving much more away, Colm gives a reason: Colm no longer wants to fill his days with aimless chatting, he wants to make music that will be remembered after he has died - there must be more to life…

I wish Charlie had been able to come up with an actual reason like Colm. In both cases though, it was not a nice way to behave. Banshees of Inisherin covers a lot more than this but you will have to watch it. I won’t spoil it.

I watched a second popcorn movie afterwards just to try and settle my brain. I think the real problem though was a single glass of red wine I had. Red wine to me of late is like red cordial. I was pinging and had a shit night