Early Morning With The Flemish Professor

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

My eyes are awake but I know it's too early for outside it's dark.

I try to go back to sleep. I need to go back to sleep. For although Saturday night will be doing absolutely nothing (wife will be out at a kid's party) the day will be busy.

It's useless. I'm awake.

Regular readers, to be fair regular readers for a long time back,will know that insomnia hits me from time to time, meaning that I'm in this zombie like being of too awake to be sleepy and too sleepy to be awake. If this was six months ago my actions would have been to get out of bed, make myself a cup of tea and watch a recording of a sports game, mainly football.

But that was then. I knew that there was only one programme for me that I've recorded....and I wanted to watch it that evening.

So I try to go back to sleep. Think sleepy thoughts. It's night out there. I went to bed as late as possible (11:30pm) so that this wouldn't happen......because it already did this week.

But it's no use......I'm awake.

Do you know, apart from the state of limbo that your body feels, what is the worst part of insomnia? It's that moment when you find out what the time is. I switch on my Kindle.

3:48am. Four hours twelve minutes and now I'm awake. What makes it even more worse is that as I have things planned for Saturday morning the alarm had been set for six. Summer (if you call the past few months that) is going soon. The sky is black and daylight will not be expected for a while.

Part of my insomnia routine will never change. I make myself a cup of tea. Priorities.

Could go on the laptop. But my mind's not really with it then. There really is no other option to pass the time. It's the programme I'd been saving to watch that evening, Professor T, a Flemish crime series in the Walter Presents foreign language stable of TV shows from Channel 4.

Without trying to spoil the plot essentially the series is about an idiosyncratic college professor of criminology with OCD issues who helps the Belgian police solve crime. I could go further but it wouldn't be fair to those who didn't see it.

Now let me make a few things clear. The show has echoes of Monk (which I didn't like) and Perception (which I did). It is however (judging on the first episode) more realistic (this episode was about a series of rapes in a college campus - I cannot recall a crime series showing the long term effects on rape on its victims as vividly as this one).

Neither am I going to from on high pass final judgement. Am old (way old as it happens) enough to realise that for TV series the real test for the first episode is whether you'd want to watch the second one. In that it passed with flying colours.

As I finish writing this the sun has come out. I should go back to try and sleep again but it's too late. I've a busy daytime and a nothing obvious Saturday night to come (Nothing planned to watch on TV...unless West Ham win....please..... when Match of the Day will become compulsive viewing).

Still thankyou Professor T for helping pass the way too early morning.

Until the next time.