The Eskimos supposedly have lots of different words to distinguish between types of snow. I don't know if that's true, but it's the kind of thing people tell you, usually not people with a big grasp of Inuit languages admittedly. It makes me wonder why our own vocabulary hasn't adapted to our surroundings. What about words to discern between different types of being stuck in traffic? Or a range of descriptions for the different annoying gits in a railway carriage?
Anyway, this is getting round to wondering why there is such a limited range of words for the quality of sleep. "Did you sleep well?" "Yes." "What sort of sleep was it?" "It was just sleep." We lack words for the degrees of slumber, the quality of kip.
Today offers a particular type of sleep. It's a bank holiday, a Monday without the need to go to work or take the children to school. It's a magnificent chance of a lie-in. Big time sleeping. It means looking at the alarm clock and laughing into its bossy face. It's way past getting up time. It's really late. And I'm still lying in bed, half awake, half asleep. It's a good time for dreaming and making plans that feel a bit like dreams, which you forget when you get up. It's that feeling when you're drifting back and forth between sleeping and waking.
It might not have special name, but it's a very special sleep.
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