Rough Sleepers…
When I drift off to sleep, nothing rattles me. I have slept through many noisy calamities, tornado like weather, and family members being awake and sick with lights on and making noise enough to wake the dead. My own snoring, which I am told causes window glass vibration throughout the neighborhood, does not wake me. When I sink into the arms of Hypnos and Morpheus, my position in bed does not change. Apparently I don’t twitch a muscle until hours later when I arise and quickly move with a stiff, hobbling sprint to the restroom for urgent urinary relief. I am what you might call a heavy sleeper, or deep sleeper, both of which mean the same as sound sleeper.
On the other hand, Roomie is the antithesis of that, as she usually has trouble getting to sleep and will waken at the drop of a tissue three houses away. She tosses and turns, kicks and bucks, thrashing the night away, in and out of bed until she can’t stand it any longer and just gets up and stays up. She might be described as a light or shallow sleeper.
On several occasions my good Welsh blogging friend, Liz, has made reference to rough sleepers. I understand the words rough and sleeper, so initially I thought I knew what she was talking about — someone like Roomie who kicks and thrashes about in a very rough manner. But that was nonsensical when used in Liz’s context. Yet again, Liz often weaves fantastical mysteries for her American readers by writing about such things as fish pie, Mumbles, beans on toast, titchy spaces, portakabins, dithering, and… well, you get the picture. English is the native tongue for both of us, but my American version is not nearly so rich as Liz’s Welsh slant on it. I have not heard her voice, but I can imagine that it has that same richness and melodic quality that we love to listen to.
According to dictionary.com, a rough sleeper is an informal UK phrase used to refer to “a homeless person; a person living on the streets.” So, if you’re reading Liz spinning her stories about George, her often misbehaving pup, and her charming life in Swansea, Wales, if she mentions a rough sleeper, she is really referring to what we know in the States as a street person or homeless person. As for titchy, I have not a clue…
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Titchy, oh, you know, Winston, it means dwtty!
Thanks for the mention!
Oh, of course, why didn’t I think of that? dwtty, indeed!
Titchy = small
PS:
Since Liz is Welsh, the correct spelling is LLLLiz
Marriages should be balanced by those who fall asleep easily and sleep deeply to not be the ones who snore. How fair is it that if you don’t snore, you marry someone who does and you are the kind who cannot fall asleep the instant your head hits the pillow. This should be a marital test that all consider before they link themselves together for life! You can assume I take awhile to fall asleep and my husband, who snores, is the kind who is asleep the instant his head hits the pillow. Does this sound bitter? Good!
when my daughter was little and she would sneak into bed with me she’d wake me up kicking and punching..like sleeping with a colt…
my virus catcher says infected.webpage.gen
what ever that means..every time i come here that’s what it says…
And yet - we manage to understand (and learn from!) each other, we Tennesseans and Welsh-folk.
Some snorers don’t develop that activity until some years after marriage so, it’s not always possible to pre-screen them, but well-worth the effort — might catch a few.
I, too, usually require about an hour to fall asleep. No doubt the following is a unique experience to me, but any night my partner and I were on good terms with one another, his snoring never bothered me during that time before I joined him fast asleep in slumberland. The nights I was annoyed with him, his snoring drove me up the wall. Hm-m-m !
I fall asleep within about 20 minutes to a half-hour, depending how wound up I am. When occasionally it takes me longer, the snoring of my mate kicks in and then it takes me forever to fall asleep or I do fall asleep but shallowly.
I’m told that I’m pretty still but that I “squeek” sometimes.
Winston, your web page is reported as being infectious,
the Trojan is “HTML/Infected.WebPage.Gen”.
Fix it please.